When a Brazilian man set out for a three-day fishing trip in early August, he expected to get back with a freezer full of fish. Instead, he spent 11 days floating in a freezer in the Atlantic Ocean.
According to reports, Romualdo Macedo Rodrigues was forced to use the freezer as a vessel when his boat sank off the coast of northern Brazil.
“I was desperate. I thought my end was coming. But thank God, God gave me one more chance,” Rodrigues told CNN affiliate Record TV. “I saw [the freezer] wasn’t sinking. I jumped [inside it]. It fell to one side and kept normal.”
Despite being a fisherman, Rodrigues said that he cannot swim. The freezer kept him from drowning, but for days and days, he floated alone in the Atlantic reportedly with no food or water, hoping for rescue. At one point, sharks were circling him. There are questions surrounding how, exactly, he managed to survive without water for so long.
“Sharks were surrounding the freezer, but they went away. I thought [I would be attacked],” he continued. “I stayed on the top [of the freezer]. I didn’t sleep, I didn’t sleep. I saw the dawn, the dusk, asking God to send someone to rescue me.”
After a week, though, he fully expected to die in the freezer. But eventually, and incredibly, another group of fishermen ran into the freezer off the coast of Suriname, a small country to the north of Brazil.
“I heard a noise, and there was a boat on top of the freezer,” Rodrigues explained. “Only they thought there was no one there. Then they slowly pulled over, my vision was already fading, then I said, ‘My God, the boat.’ I raised my arms and asked for help.”
Rodrigues, much worse for wear after his experience, was taken to a hospital in Suriname. Once there, however, he was reportedly detained by authorities because he lacked documentation. He was eventually released and allowed to return to Brazil.
“That freezer was God in my life,” he said. “The only thing I had was the freezer. It was a miracle.”