3 stranded men were down to coconuts and a dead battery before Pacific rescue (2024)

Three men rescued this week from a remote atoll in the Pacific were subsisting on coconuts and well water when a U.S. Navy plane spotted their plea for help Sunday, a Coast Guard spokeswoman said.

The three, all in their 40s, had set out March 31 from Polowat Atoll, Micronesia, in a 20-foot skiff with an outboard motor for Pikelot Atoll, a 31-acre, uninhabited speck in a vast ocean, according to a Coast Guard news release Wednesday. The men were not identified by the Coast Guard.

“Their initial goal was to fish around Pikelot, but the skiff was damaged when they approached the island due to the swells surging on the island and surrounding shoal,” Chief Warrant Officer Sara Muir of Coast Guard Forces Micronesia, Sector Guam told Stars and Stripes by email Thursday. “They were originally going to meet up with another family from Satawal [Atoll] at Pikelot. The Satawal family ended up not going due to weather and sea conditions.”

On Saturday a woman “reported her three uncles had not returned from Pikelot Atoll,” approximately 115 miles northwest of Polowat Atoll, both part the Federated States of Micronesia, according to the Coast Guard.

Pikelot, a low, teardrop-shaped coral island covered with palm trees and shrubs, is just 2½ miles long and 1¾ miles wide in a search area the Coast Guard described as 78,800 square miles of the South Pacific.

Nearly four years ago, a similar episode unfolded when three mariners who went missing in a skiff also signaled military aviators over Pikelot.

In that case, an Air Force KC-135 Stratotanker aerial refueler spotted the letters “SOS” laid out in palm fronds with the missing boat alongside it on the beach.

The Stratotanker, with a crew of Hawaii and Pennsylvania Air National Guard members aboard, was searching for the overdue Micronesians. The men had gone off course after their motor ran out of fuel. They drifted to Pikelot, 120 miles from their departure point, and were stranded there several days.

An Australian navy Tiger attack helicopter provided the men assistance and a Micronesian patrol boat, the FSS Independence, arrived later to carry them home.

Flash forward two years and another three men in a skiff were stranded at lonesome Pikelot.

The relative’s call began a search by Joint Rescue Sub-Center Guam with a U.S. Navy P-8 Poseidon patrol aircraft from Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, and the Guam-based Coast Guard fast response cutter Oliver Henry.

On Sunday, the Poseidon crew spotted the word “HELP” laid out in palm fronds on the Pikelot beach, according to the Coast Guard release. The crew dropped survival packages to the men.

On Monday, a Coast Guard HC-130J Super Hercules — a search-and-rescue aircraft engineered for long-range flights — from Hawaii dropped a radio to the men.The Oliver Henry changed course and arrived Tuesday.

“They were in good health other than being slightly dehydrated,” Muir said by email. “Water was available through a well on the island. They ate meat from coconuts until the deliveries from the P-8.”

The three fishermen were excited and relieved to see the small boat from the Oliver Henry arrive, Muir said. A crewman from the cutter, Petty Officer 2nd Class Eugene Halishlius, spoke to them in their native language; “it was special,” she said.

“As far as food goes, they had enough to survive, but not for much longer,” Muir said. “The mariners did have a radio with them initially but were not able to make comms with other islands before their battery died.”

The Oliver Henry took the men and their equipment, including their skiff, back to Polowat, according to the Coast Guard.

“This recent operation near Pikelot Atoll hits home the kind of difference we can make,” Lt. Ray Cerrato, the Oliver Henry’s commander, said in the release. “It’s about more than just performing a duty; it’s about the real human connections we forge and the lives we touch.”