Tuesday, October 15, 2024, 18:41
Mikhail Pichugin, a 46-year-old Russian, was rescued this Monday in the Sea of Okhotsk, in the Pacific Ocean, after surviving 67 days adrift in an inflatable raft. He has suffered hell when he was shipwrecked along with two relatives who lost their lives. His nephew Ilia, 15, died of hunger and his brother Sergei, 49 and the teenager’s father, went crazy with the loss and refused to eat, which also ended up causing his death.
On August 9, the three went sailing aboard a Baikal 470 catamaran-type boat from the Khabarovsk region, on the island of Sakhalin. Shortly after leaving the port, contact with them was lost for unknown reasons. The family was not heard from until October 14 when the fishing boat ‘Angel’ found the boat about 1,000 kilometers away from where it had set sail, in front of the village of Ust-Khairyuzovo on the Kamchatka peninsula, in eastern Russia. .
Mikhail told his rescuers about the terrible experience he had experienced during the 67 days adrift, according to the Russian newspaper ‘Sankt-Peterburgskie Vedomosti’. The castaways carried clothing, life jackets and flares in their boat, as well as a small supply of food and twenty liters of water. On September 18, he lost his nephew to starvation and ten days later his brother, who suffered a great upheaval when his son died. He began to behave erratically. He cried, screamed, jumped into the water and refused to eat until he died, according to the survivor. Mijaíl was left alone until he was rescued.
Hopeless
The three castaways had been searched without success for several days by a rescue operation, which was suspended, leaving the missing people for dead. However, this week the discovery that no one expected was made when Mijaíl was discovered by the boat ‘Ángel’, whose crew helped him.
In a video released by the Prosecutor’s Office of the region where he was located at night, a man with a beard and a life jacket can be seen, wrapped in a blanket, aboard his inflatable boat. The survivor was rushed to a Magadan hospital in a state of serious shock, although he is recovering positively.
For the castaway’s wife, Ekaterina, that Mijaíl has survived is “a kind of miracle.” According to what he told the Ria Novosti agency, perhaps he was saved thanks to his overweight. “It was about 100 kilos,” the woman commented. When he was found, the man had lost 50.
However, the castaway’s joy has been short-lived, since the Transport Prosecutor’s Office of the eastern Russian zone has opened a criminal case against him for possible crimes of violation of aquatic safety regulations that caused the death of two people.
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