Man claims to have been stranded at sea

A man who claims to have survived being stranded at sea for 13 months is on land tonight. He washed ashore on the Marshall Islands Monday.

It is hard to believe, but 37-year old Jose Alvarenga says he spent 13 months drifting on a 25-foot fishing boat.

He was found in a small village in the Marshall Islands about 8000 kilometres from Tapachula, Mexico where he claims he left on a one day fishing trip. He says his boat broke down in a storm and he survived eating raw fish, birds and turtles, drinking rain water and occasionally his own urine. He also said he set off with a teenage companion, but the man died because he couldn’t keep the raw food down. The story is so incredible,it reads like the script of a movie. Many people are comparing it to Castaway, where Tom Hanks plays a man who survived four years alone on an island. Officials say Alvarenga is in good shape considering his ordeal, but isn’t fully coherent. They’re still trying to verify his story.

Tom Armbruster is the U.S. Ambassador to the Marshall Islands: “It sounded very much like it was a storm. He talked about north wind and waves and being blown off course and losing a companion at sea as well.”

Alvarenga says he is a citizen of El Salvador but has been living in Mexico for the past 15 years and would like to return. And as strange as this story sounds, it’s not the first time something like this has happened. In 2006, three Mexican fisherman drifted for nine months before being rescued.