A
doctor in Fiji is examining three teenage boys rescued 240 miles from land
after they were lost in the South Pacific for more than 50 days.
Apunas
Sakamuri, spokesman for the police department in Suva, Fiji, said the three
were admitted to Suva Public Hospital and then released to a private doctor
identified as Dr. Rosemary Mitchell.
Filo
Filo, 15, and his cousins — Etueni Nasau, 14, and Samu Pelesa, 15 — were
famished, dehydrated, exhausted and sunburned when a crew member on a fishing
boat two miles away spotted their 12-foot metal boat and alerted his superior.
The
rescue, which came two weeks after hundreds turned out to mourn them, elated
their friends and relatives.
Tanu
Filo, whose 15-year-old son Filo was among the survivors, said in a telephone
interview from his native Tokelau Islands that, “I was on cloud nine. I
was so joyful.”
“I
couldn’t believe my son and his boys were found again. Unbelievable,” said
Tanu Filo, who noted that a traditional celebration is now in order.
“He
alerted us that he saw something immediately on our bow, directly in front of
us,” Tai Fredricsen said from his 280-foot tuna boat. “As we drew
closer, we could tell that it was a small boat of some type.”
The
boat was a strange find so far from land. “It’s not something you go in
the open ocean with,” he said, noting that the boat was 240 miles
northeast of Fiji when it was spotted late Tuesday afternoon.
And
it got stranger. Inside were three naked teenage boys — cousins from the
Tokelau Islands 750 nautical miles away. Asked whether they needed help, they
said yes.
Natives
of the Tokelau Islands — three small atolls in the Pacific Ocean, about midway
between New Zealand and Hawaii — the boys said they had set out in the boat in
early October to travel from one island to another, Fredricsen said.
“The
islands are pretty close and they can be transited quite easily with these
small vessels,” but they got disoriented after losing sight of land,
“and that was it,” he said.
It
was dumb luck that the fishing boat came upon the boys, said Fredricsen, since
its usual port of unloading and operations is in American Samoa.
“By
chance, we were going to New Zealand to unload” because the boat was
scheduled to be pulled from the water and inspected, a quadrennial event, he
said.
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