The Telegraph: Singaporean diver survives 80 hours adrift at sea
A Singaporean diver has told of his incredible survival while drifting for 80 hours on a life buoy on the South China Sea with no shelter, food or water.
John Low, 60, fought through hallucinations and talked to the buoy to keep himself sane as sea creatures nibbled at his legs while he floated under a biting sun by day and shivered at night.
“I could feel the fish. You feel fins, you feel bites, you feel something move and rub against your leg. It comes on and off. The problem is that, when you think about it, you fear losing your leg or losing an arm,” he told The Straits Times, in his first interview about his harrowing ordeal in May.
Mr Low’s nightmare began when the weather suddenly turned during a diving trip and his boat sank in high waves near Tioman island, off the east coast of Malaysia.
As water poured inside the vessel, Mr Low only had time to grab a life buoy and his backpack, which contained his passport but no supplies.
“I was not really scared as I felt that someone would come and save me. I’m religious,” said Mr Low, who later explained that his Christian faith and the desire to see his wife and three children again gave him the willpower to survive the harsh conditions that followed.
Although he alerted friends to his predicament, rough seas and darkness prevented an early rescue as strong currents carried him out further.
After 40 hours at sea, Mr Low was forced to remove his clothes as they were chafing painfully against his badly sunburnt skin.
Parched and vomiting from ingesting salty sea water, he began to hallucinate that someone was holding his hand and taking him to a grocery store to buy Coca-Cola. He heard voices urging him to let go of his flotation device.
Mr Low had lost his glasses when the boat sank and could only make out colours in the sky, but as the sun set in the evenings he mustered the will to carry on, telling himself: “This is the most beautiful sunset. I want to see the sunrise tomorrow.”
But by the afternoon of the fourth day, his hopes began to fade. “I actually told my God, ‘I’m already in this pain, so I don’t mind going inside the water and going home (to Heaven), or if you think I should go back to my real home and meet my family. Either way, I’m ready',” he said.
Two hours later, his answer came in the form of the Diogo Cao, a 4000-tonne dredger, whose captain spotted him from several miles away before crew members fished him out of the water.
“I was as small as a bacteria, but this captain managed to locate me. Whoever spotted me must have an eagle’s vision,” he said.
An exhausted Mr Low, whose limbs had become stuck to his rescue device, lost consciousness after his rescue and woke up on a small bed on the ship’s deck. “They kept telling me: ‘Don’t worry. You are safe’,” he said.
Mr Low was later winched from the ship by the Republic of Singapore Air Force (RSAF), who posted a video of his rescue and their emotional reunion a month later on their Facebook page.
With a wide smile, Mr Low hugs each member of the aircrew and thanked them for their “bravery.”
