Rick Rodriguez and three of his friends spent nine hours on an inflatable life raft in the Pacific Ocean after the yacht they were sailing on sank after colliding with a whale, the Washington Post reported. A few days after the accident, the castaways decided to talk about what they experienced in the ocean.
Raindancer owner Rick Rodriguez of Tavernier, Florida, and three of his friends were on a three-week cruise from the Galapagos Islands to French Polynesia when the accident occurred. On March 13, around 1:00 p.m., Rodriguez was eating vegetarian pizza with friends “when he heard a loud bang,” the Guardian reported. “The second pizza just came out of the oven and I was dipping a slice in the sauce,” Rodriguez said.
The yacht’s passengers looked overboard and saw “a really big bleeding whale,” Rodriguez told Today. The animal allegedly damaged the fiberglass hull of the yacht, which sank within minutes. Before entering the inflatable life raft, the man managed to send a mayday signal.
The survivors spent nine hours on a life raft
– It was a very surreal moment. Even when the boat was sinking, it felt like a scene out of a movie,” one of Rodriguez’s friends, Alana Litz, who was on board told Today. Rodriguez, already on the life raft, sent messages to his brother in Miami and a friend who was sailing in the area, Tommy Joyce. “Tommy, this is no joke, we hit a whale and the yacht sank,” he wrote.
Joyce later admitted to Today that he was about 65 miles (104 kilometers) from the survivors at the time. After posting entries in special groups on social media, he realized that his unit was closest to the scene of the accident and rushed to the rescue. Eventually, Rodriguez and three of his friends boarded Joyce’s yacht nine hours after the yacht sank.
A few days after the accident, the owner of Raindancer described the events on social media. “It’s been four days and I still can’t believe he’s gone,” he wrote on Instagram. As he added, he will remember “for the rest of his life” what was left on the yacht: “paintings on the walls, belongings, pizza in the oven, cameras, journals … The sea will keep it all forever.”
Guardian, The Washington Post, Today
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