After three months of being adrift at sea, Australian Timothy Lyndsay Shaddock and his dog Bella set foot on the Mexican coast on Tuesday, after being rescued by a tuna boat in the Pacific Ocean.
“I thought I was not going to make it, so thank you very much,” the 54-year-old Australian told reporters after getting off the Maria Delia boat, belonging to the Mexican tuna company Tuny. Tim Shaddock and Bella ate raw fish and rainwater.
From the Port of Manzanillo, in Colima, Shaddok emphasized that the journey “was difficult” with “terrible health.” He also admitted that he thought he would die from the possible arrival of a hurricane.
“We were very hungry, I didn’t think we were going to make it,” he insisted. He carried many provisions, but they ran out of food due to the breakdown of their ship, called Aloha Toa, so they resorted to eating raw fish.
Shaddock also recounted that the first feeling of relief was when the Grupomar company boat, in charge of the production of tuna “Tuny”, arrived for him and his pet, because “it was like touching land, coming home.”
“I like being at sea, but when things get tough you have to survive and when you are finally rescued, you feel how you want to continue living, for that I am so grateful,” he emphasized.
“I feel good. I feel much better than I was, I tell you,” Shaddock, smiling, bearded and thin, told reporters on the pier in the port city some 337 kilometers west of Mexico City.
“To the captain and the fishing company who saved my life, I am very grateful. I’m alive and I really didn’t think I’d make it,” Shaddock said, adding that both he and his “amazing” dog Bella are doing well.
Shaddock described himself as a calm person who loves to be alone in the ocean. He left in April from the Baja California Peninsula to cross the Pacific Ocean to French Polynesia, initially he knew nothing.
The Sydney man’s catamaran set sail from the Mexican city of La Paz, but was ground to a halt due to bad weather weeks into the voyage. She said the last time she saw land was in early May when she left the Sea of ??Cortez for the Pacific. There was a full moon.
“There were many, many, many bad days and many good days,” he said. “The energy, the fatigue is the hardest part,” she said. He spent time fixing things and stayed positive by going in the water to “just enjoy being in the water.”
When the tuna boat’s helicopter spotted Shaddock’s catamaran some 1,200 miles from land, it was the first sign of humans it had seen in three months. The pilot tossed him a drink and then flew away, returning later with a speedboat.
Shaddock said that the tuna boat became his land and that Bella was an immediate hit with the crew. He also explained how he and the dog met in the middle of Mexico. “She’s Mexican,” he said.
“She wouldn’t let me go. I tried to find her a home three times and she kept following me.” Bella didn’t leave the boat until Shaddock had left. He had left her in the care of Genaro Rosales, a crew member from Mazatlán, to adopt her on the condition that she take good care of her dog.
The sailor will return to Australia soon and looks forward to seeing his family. There have been other stories of extreme ocean survival, but not all of them end happily.
