Inflatable boat miracle: man survives 67 days in the Pacific

Moscow (Russia) - A Russian man has survived two months on an inflatable boat in the Pacific. Two companions, a man and a 15-year-old boy, did not survive the odyssey, as the public prosecutor's office announced on Tuesday.

A video still shared by the official Telegram channel of the Russian traffic prosecutor's office shows the inflatable boat.
A video still shared by the official Telegram channel of the Russian traffic prosecutor's office shows the inflatable boat.  © Uncredited/Russian Far Eastern Transport Prosecutor's Office/AP

The three amateur captains had reportedly set off from the Khabarovsk region in the Far East of Russia to Sakhalin Island on August 9, but never arrived there.

Rescue workers suspected that the boat had been driven to the Kamchatka Peninsula by the current, but a search using helicopters and an airplane was unsuccessful.

The inflatable boat was finally found on Monday in the Sea of Okhotsk, a marginal sea of the Pacific Ocean - around 1000 kilometers from its starting point.

"The boat was discovered at around 10 p.m. on October 14 as it passed a fishing boat," the public prosecutor's office announced. There was one survivor and two fatalities on board.

Being overweight could have saved him

Rescue workers pull Mikhail Pichguin ashore after he survived 67 on a boat.
Rescue workers pull Mikhail Pichguin ashore after he survived 67 on a boat.  © Uncredited/Russian Emergency Ministry Press Service/AP

The public prosecutor's office released a video showing the bearded survivor wearing a life jacket and shouting to the crew of the fishing boat: "I don't have much strength." But then he manages to grab a rope.

The captain of the fishing boat, Alexei Arykov, told the news agency RIA Novosti that the survivor Mikhail Pichugin was "thin" but "conscious". The fishermen brought him ashore in the city of Magadan.

Pitschugin's wife Ekaterina told RIA Novosti that the rescue of her husband was a "miracle". The three boatmen, who come from the city of Ulan-Ude in Siberia, only had food and water for two weeks. Her husband probably survived because he was overweight: "He weighed about 100 kilograms." Russian television reported that he had lost 50 kilograms.

As the newspaper "Komsomolskaya Pravda" reported, citing family members, Pichugin, who works as a driver on Sakhalin, had invited his 49-year-old brother Sergei and his 15-year-old nephew Ilya on the boat trip. They wanted to go whale watching.