Rescuers captured footage of the moment they found David Soares clinging to a buoy after two days at sea.
A fisherman was found Tuesday clinging to a buoy off the coast of Praia de Atafona, nearly 200 miles north of Rio de Janeiro. David Soares went missing on Christmas Day when he set out to sea alone and fell into the water on Sunday. How he managed to survive the next 48-plus hours sounds like nothing short of a miracle.
Soares told G1 Globo he fell off of his boat and initially scrambled to swim to it, but the currents were so strong that he couldn’t make it back to safety. He described those first 10 minutes as the most difficult before realizing he’d need to conserve as much energy as possible. And that’s when the survival effort took a turn. He first took his clothes off, realizing that they would only weigh him down while he attempted to stay afloat and drift as long as possible.
“There was swell, wind… I decided to let the waters take me to use less strength and ‘walk’ faster,” he said. “It took me about four hours swimming to reach Porto do Açu, on the buoys.”
Soares eventually found a buoy and climbed onto it. And that’s where he stayed for nearly two days while rescuers had simultaneously set out to search for him.
“I thought I would die of cold before any help would arrive,” he said.
Help did arrive, though, with other local fishermen and even the Brazilian Navy called in to assist the rescue effort. When a fishing boat finally found David on Tuesday, he was still clinging to the same buoy.
MILAGRE: Um pescador foi encontrado à deriva pendurado em uma boia de sinalização no mar em São João da Barra, no Norte Rio de Janeiro. Deivid Soares, de 43 anos, ficou desparecido por dois dias e foi encontrado por um amigo, que também é pescador @sbtrio pic.twitter.com/w330pEyQ6t
— Diego Sangermano (@disangermano) December 27, 2022
At the end of August, a Brazilian fisherman spent 11 days hanging on to a freezer adrift in the ocean after his boat sank.
