Three men rescued from deserted island after spelling 'help' with palm leaves

[Eugene]

Source: The Guardian

Three men rescued from deserted island after spelling 'help' with palm leaves

Lauren Gambino
Sunday 10 April 2016 08.24 BST

Three men aboard a 19-ft skiff set off for a short sailing trip into the south Pacific. The weather grew rough, and the tiny ship was tossed into the sea on Monday night.

Stranded in the dark and their ship lost far from ground, the men could only swim.

Buoyed by life vests, they swam nearly two miles under a dark sky until they reached the long-deserted Fanadik, several hundred miles north of Papua New Guinea.

For three days they remained stranded on the remote island, praying for rescue.

Then, on Thursday morning, crew aboard a US navy plane zipping through the sky spotted three men waving fluorescent orange life vests. They stood next to piles of palm fronds that spelled: H-E-L-P.

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Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/apr/09/men-rescued-help-palm-leaves-island-pacific

[Human101948]

1. A real life Gilligan's Island!

Would they have thought twice about signaling if they had Ginger and Mary Ann with them on that island?

[Spitfire of ATJ]

3. More of these shows needed a final episode....

Like the one where Stalag 13 gets liberated by the allies or the one where Gladys Kravitz leads the mob in a witch burning.

[2naSalit]

2. Yikes

pretty traumatic event! Nightmare material for sure!

Glad they weren't stranded for long.

[retrowire]

4. cool! ADVENTURE!!! NT

[Arger68]

5. The first thing I thought of when I heard this:

[eppur_se_muova]

6. Beat me to it !

<3 The Far Side.

[SoapBox]

7. Beat me too.

I swore this was going to be a Gilligan's Island post.

Thanks for the real life story though.

(Actually, read the story, it's not long...they found them mostly because they had a fire going that was first spotted. And then the number of searches and folks saved...good job.)

[Fast Walker 52]

13. haha-- love that one!

[keithbvadu2]

8. The professor could make a nuclear reactor out of a coconut but

could not fix a hole in a boat.

[jtuck004]

10. "Specialization is for insects" n/t

[narnian60]

11. Hahahaha.

Good one.

[Liberalagogo]

9. Thank goodness

Last edited Sun Apr 10, 2016, 12:44 PM - Edit history (1)

Joey wasn't there:


or Bender:

[jtuck004]

12. Meh.They weren't even stranded for a whole episode. n/t

[FailureToCommunicate]

14. Textbook survival efforts. Amazing that they could swim miles in the dark, without sharks going for

them. And that they happened to swim in the correct direction to find land.

[leftofcool]

15. Where is Mary Ann?

[secondwind]

16. Great story! They could have ended up like Tom Hanks talking to a soccer ball for a couple of

years! Ha!