Australian Timothy Lyndsay Shaddock gives a thumbs up during a welcome ceremony with Grupo Mar President Antonio Suarez, left, and Oscar Meza Oregó, captain of the Mexican tuna vessel “Maria Delia”, after being rescued from the sea and docked in port. in Manzanillo, Mexico, Tuesday, July 18, 2023.
Fernando Llano/AP
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Australian Timothy Lyndsay Shaddock gives a thumbs up during a welcome ceremony with Grupo Mar President Antonio Suarez, left, and Oscar Meza Oregó, captain of the Mexican tuna vessel “Maria Delia”, after being rescued from the sea and docked in port. in Manzanillo, Mexico, Tuesday, July 18, 2023.
Fernando Llano/AP
MANZANILLO, Mexico — An Australian sailor who was rescued by a Mexican tuna fishing boat after being at sea with his dog for three months said on Tuesday he was grateful to be alive after set foot on land for the first time since their ordeal began.
Timothy Lyndsay Shaddock, 54, leaves the Mexican city of Manzanillo after being examined on the boat that saved him, the Maria Delia.
“I feel fine. I feel much better than before, I tell you,” Shaddock, smiling, bearded and thin, told reporters on the dock in the port city about 337 miles from Mexico. km west of the City.
“To the captain and the fishing company that saved my life, I’m so grateful. I’m alive and I really don’t think I’ll survive,” Shaddock said, adding that he and the dog “are alive.” wonderful” her Bella. both do well.
Shaddock describes himself as a quiet person who likes to be alone on the ocean. When asked why he departed in April from Mexico’s Baja Peninsula to cross the Pacific Ocean to French Polynesia, he was initially baffled.
“I’m not sure I have the answer to that question, but I love sailing and I love the people of the sea,” he said. “It is the people of the sea that bring us together. The ocean is within us. We are the ocean.”
The Sydney man’s catamaran sailed from the Mexican city of La Paz but broke down due to bad weather that lasted for weeks on the journey. He said the last time he saw land was in early May when he sailed out of the Sea of Cortez and into the Pacific Ocean. There is a full moon.
Shaddock said he was fully supplied, but a storm knocked out his electronics and his ability to cook. He and Bella survive on live fish.
“There were many, many bad days and many good days,” he said.
“The energy, the fatigue is the hardest part,” he says. He took the time to fix things and kept a positive attitude by going into the water to “just enjoy being in the water.”
When the tuna fishing boat’s helicopter spotted Shaddock’s catamaran about 1,930 kilometers inland, it was the first sign of humans he’d seen in three months, said Shaddock. The pilot threw him a glass of water and then flew away, then returned in a speedboat from María Delia, he said.
Grupomar, the company that operates the fishing fleet, did not specify when the rescue took place. But it said in a statement that Shaddock and his dog were in a “precarious” state when found, lacking supplies and shelter, and the tuna boat’s crew had received medical attention , give them food and water.
Shaddock said the tuna boat had become his land and Bella was immediately impressed with the crew. He also explains how he and the dog met.
The crew of the Mexican tuna boat “Maria Delia” pose for a photo with Bella, the dog of Australian Timothy Lyndsay Shaddock, both of whom they rescued from an incapacitated catamaran in the Pacific Ocean, as they bring the pair Double arrival at port in Manzanillo, Mexico, Tuesday, July. 18, 2023.
Fernando Llano/AP
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The crew of the Mexican tuna boat “Maria Delia” pose for a photo with Bella, the dog of Australian Timothy Lyndsay Shaddock, both of whom they rescued from an incapacitated catamaran in the Pacific Ocean, as they bring the pair Double arrival at port in Manzanillo, Mexico, Tuesday, July. 18, 2023.
Fernando Llano/AP
“Bella found me in the middle of Mexico. She’s Mexican,” he said. “She’s the spirit of the Midlands and she won’t let me go. I’ve tried to find a home for her three times and she just keeps following me across the water. She’s so much braver than I am. , it is surely that .”
Perhaps for that reason, Bella didn’t leave the boat until Shaddock sailed away on Tuesday. He chose Genaro Rosales, a crew member from Mazatlan, to adopt her on the condition that he would take good care of the dog.
Shaddock said he will be returning to Australia soon and he is looking forward to seeing his family.
There have been other stories of ocean survival, but not all of them had happy endings.
In 2016, a Colombian fisherman was rescued after two months in the Pacific Ocean. Three of his comrades were dead. He was rescued by a merchant ship more than 2,000 miles (3,220 km) southeast of Hawaii. He and others were fishing off the coast of Colombia when the engine of their small boat failed, sending them adrift.
In 2014, a Salvadoran fisherman washed up on a small beach in Ebon Atoll in the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean after being at sea for 13 months. Jose Salvador Alvarenga left Mexico for a day of shark fishing in December 2012. He claims to have survived on fish, birds and turtles before his boat washed ashore 5,500 miles (8,850 km).
In other cases, boats were found but there were no survivors or were completely lost.
More than 20,000 migrants died try to cross the Mediterranean to Europe since 2014, according to the International Organization for Migration.
Antonio Suarez, Grupomar’s president, said Tuesday that this could be María Delia’s last voyage because he is modernizing the company’s fleet and the boat is the smallest and is more than 50 years old.
If so, it would be a “miracle breakup that saves lives,” Suarez said.
