Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - Lost At Sea For 438 Days - The Salvador Alvarenga story

Episode Date: February 8, 2025

This is the story of Salvador Alvarenga and how his fishing trip turned into him being lost at sea for 438 days.

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At a racetrack, you'll find everything you need to get through the day ahead. The morning hits hard when you get up early. You're obviously tired and looking surly. Grab some made-in-store breakfast, freshly ground coffee, ice-cold drinks, delicious hot food, and snacks all in one stop. The day is long and can feel like a grind. But you'll get fully stocked and everything will be fine. Race track is here to keep you going.

An all-day haul to get you. Racetrack, whatever gets you going. So this couple, they live in the jungle right near the beach. And one day, they see a strange man crawling through the sand. And he's naked and he can barely stand and he's clutching a knife. And he's shouting something incoherently in a language they don't understand. So the guy's name is Salvador, and he works as a deep-sea fisherman, catching tuna and sharks and stuff off the coast of Mexico.

It's a dangerous job, but he's into it. And one day, he decides to go on a two-day fishing trip. And his normal fishing partner can't make it. and he needs someone to go with. So this young, inexperienced guy volunteers. This guy, Pinyatta. So Salvador and Penaata, they get in the boat and they head out to the Pacific.

And for about two days, they fish. And they catch about 1,100 pounds, enough fish to sell back home for about a week's worth of money. And so everything is going great. Until. They're finally done fishing and they turn their boat around to go back home, and then out of nowhere, a massive storm hits,

and the boat starts to fill up with water. And Penaata panics, and he's using a bucket to get the water out of the boat as Salvador tries to steer through the massive waves. And finally, luckily, after a while, the storm starts to die down. And Salvador, he can see land. They're about two hours away from the shore. And that is when boom, the boat's engine starts sputtering, and it dies. So Salvador pulls out his two-way radio, and he calls his boss, and he's like, help, my engine is dead. And the boss asks for his location, but their GPS has stopped working. And then, to make it worse, the storm starts building up again.

And it's getting stronger and stronger, and it's tossing the boat around. Sometimes the waves are raising them up three stories high before the boat drops. And Salvador realizes that the 1,100 pounds of fish they caught is making the boat unstable. So they just dump it all out. And they just keep throwing anything not useful overboard to lighten the load, like extra ice and extra fuel. And then the two-way radio does. dies. And by this point, Salvador and Penaata have been bailing water out of the boat for hours.

And the engine still won't start. And Salvador gets frustrated and he's pissed off and he just loses it. He picks up the fish-killing club and he just smashes the boat's engine. And he grabs the dead GPS and the dead two-way radio and he just chucks them into the water. Then as night comes and the temperature drops, the two men, they have to huddle under an upside-down cooler for warmth and shelter. Meanwhile, back on land, a search party is formed to go out and look for the two. But unfortunately, the storm is still very active and visibility is still very low. And after about two days of no results, the search is called off. And five more days go by before the storm finally stops. And when it does, Salvador and Penaata, they finally get their bearings and they

look around and they realize they have no idea where they are. And to make it worse, they're starving And there's nothing to eat on board, and there's nothing to drink on board. So with Salvador's equipment gone, he's got to get creative. So he spends a bit of time and he figures out how to catch things in the ocean using only his bare hands. Fish and turtles and jellyfish. And they start eating that. Raw. Because that's all they have.

And to drink, turtle blood. And their own urine. Because again, that's all they have. And then one day they get lucky and a seabird lands on the boat. So Salvador, he quickly grabs it and he unalives it. And then they get to survive eating that for a few weeks. And then it finally rains so they get to collect rain water and they start drinking that. And so for two months they live like this, eating raw animals and catching rainwater when they can.

But as time stretches on, something comes over Penaata. He's not acting the same anymore and he starts to get depressed. And as he's losing all hope, he slowly starts to refuse any food. He just simply can't bring himself to eat any more raw animals. And eventually, he just stops eating entirely. And he grows really sick. And Salvador and Penaata, they start to feel like he isn't going to make it. So they make a pact.

If Salvador makes it out alive, he'll contact Pinyata's mother and deliver her a message, a message that's only meant for her. I don't know exactly what that message is, because again, it's only meant for her. So Salvador, he agrees to this. And then one rainy morning, after they've been lost, at sea for over four months, Penaida, he finally passes away from starvation. And Salvador, he is devastated. That was the only person around. I mean, they had grown really close during this whole traumatic experience. And Salvador, he's immediately so

lonely that he keeps holding conversations with Penaata's body even after he's dead. And after six days of this, he realizes it's not mentally healthy to keep talking to a corpse pretending it's alive. So he pushes Pinyata's body back into the ocean, and he goes on, living his life on that boat, lost at sea. And 10 more months go by. And Salvador is still out there, living day to day, catching fish with his bare hands and drinking rainwater and having conversations with birds. But then, one day, Salvador starts to see a different kind of bird. Not the seabirds he's used to seeing. No, these are land birds. And through the distance, he can suddenly see kind of a mountain top. And that mountain top ends up being attached to an island. Maybe there is hope. Maybe he can

deliver that message to Penaata's mother like he asked him to. Now, this island is about an hour away, and Salvador directs his boat toward it. And when he's close enough, he dives into the ocean, and he swims for the shore. And then he gets there, and he's too weak to walk, and he's naked. And he had brought a knife with him just in case. And he slowly crawls up the beach. And he slowly crawls up the beach into the jungle, and that's where he spots a house. And the owners of that house, a couple, they see him, crawling around naked with a knife, shouting in Spanish. And they're like, who the fuck is this guy? But that couple does end up helping him get to the hospital. So, what is this island Salvador finally landed on? Well, after being lost at sea for 438 days,

Salvador had drifted over 6,000 miles all the way from Costa Azul, Mexico to Ibon in the Marshall Islands. About a month later, after he's rescued, he finally gets a chance to travel to L-14 in Mexico. There, he visits Penaata's mother, and he's able to deliver Penaata's final message to her. Then he gets a book deal because his story is just incredible, and afterwards Penaenaena's family sues him for a million dollars, wanting half the proceeds, from any of his book sales. So that's fun. I don't know if the lawsuit actually went through,

but that's the last reporting anyone did on any of them. So good luck with all that.