A U.S. Navy and Coast Guard operation on Tuesday rescued three sailors stranded on a small Pacific Ocean islet for more than a week after the trio spelled out “HELP” using palm fronds placed on a white sand beach.
The mission also unexpectedly turned into a family reunion.
The three men were planning to fish in the waters around Pikelot Atoll, part of Micronesia, on March 31 when their 20-foot open skiff was hit by waves and their outboard motor was damaged, according to U.S. Coast Guard officials.
They disembarked on the uninhabited Pikelot, but the radio ran out of battery before they could call for help.
So the castaways collected palm fronds from the 31-acre island, arranged them to spell “HELP” on the beach and waited, according to a Coast Guard statement.
The names of the stranded men were not released by the Coast Guard and CNN’s attempts to contact their families were unanswered.
For a week, the men lived on coconut meat but had fresh water from a small well on the island, which is sometimes visited by local fishermen, Coast Guard officials said.
The search for the men began on April 6, when one of their relatives called rescue officials in the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam, saying they had not returned to Polowat Atoll, an island more than 100 miles away. , where the three began their journey. Easter Sunday.
It’s hard to overstate how remote Piklelot is. The island is part of the Federated States of Micronesia, a Pacific nation between the Philippines and Hawaii that is made up of more than 600 islands spread across approximately 2.5 million square kilometers of ocean.
The Coast Guard said a U.S. Navy P-8A reconnaissance jet dispatched from Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, Japan, spotted the “HELP” sign on the beach on April 7.
Lt. Chelsea Garcia, coordinator of the search and rescue mission the day the trio were located, said the sign was “crucial” in finding them in a search area that covered more than 103,000 square miles.
“This act of ingenuity was instrumental in guiding rescue efforts directly to his location,” Garcia said in a statement.
The Navy jet delivered survival packages to the three men and transmitted their location to the rescue center.
A day later, a Coast Guard HC-130 flying from Barbers Point Air Station, Hawaii, radioed the men, who were able to tell the crew they were in good shape and eager for help getting back to Polowat.
When the Coast Guard cutter Oliver Henry arrived at Pikelot on April 9, the story took another turn.
One of the first rescuers on the beach was Petty Officer 2nd Class Eugene Halishlius. The stranded men were surprised to see that Halishlius was Micronesian and spoke the local language.
“I could see it on their faces: ‘Wow! Who is this guy who speaks our language?’” Halishlius told CNN in an interview from Oliver Henry, who was at sea on Thursday after dropping off the men in Polowat.
When he gave his name to the first stranded man to reach the rescue boat, the castaway was surprised: they were related.
“It’s a crazy world, I actually found out I’m related to them!” Halishlius said.
“He couldn’t believe I was with the Coast Guard trying to rescue them.”
The man was a third cousin, the others fourth cousins, he said.
Surprisingly, this was not Pikelot’s first shipwreck rescue.
In 2020, three other men traveling between two Micronesian atolls found themselves washed there after his boat ran out of fuel during the trip.
These three spelled out “SOS” on the beach, a message that was spotted by the crew of a U.S. Air Force tanker operating out of Andersen Air Force Base on Guam, who then briefed naval units from the Coast Guard, Micronesia, and Australia. to rescue the men. of the island.
How does this happen on the same island twice in four years?
“It could be coincidence,” said Sara Muir, public affairs officer for U.S. Coast Guard Forces Micronesia.
“The people of Micronesia frequently travel from island to island, and they do so with great skill and experience,” she said.
But occasionally, accidents happen. And the same goes for unexpected family gatherings.
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