When watch standers aboard the M/V George III spotted a small sailboat in distress after its lone sailor had spent 44 days at sea, it would have been clear from a distance that something was badly wrong. The boat had no mast. What they could not yet see was the condition of the man alone on board.
He was 39-year-old California sailor Kai Sato. By the time the ship found him, approximately 900 miles from Hawaii, he was dehydrated and severely depressed, according to the account submitted by the vessel's master, Capt. Eric Veloni. His drinking water had run out 10 days earlier. The only food he could prepare had to be cooked in seawater, and for days, he had survived in part by collecting condensation and licking it from plastic.
Sato had set off from the Catalina Islands hoping to complete his first solo sail across the Pacific. For the first part of the journey, the trip was the adventure he had planned. Then, only two weeks in, his mast snapped.
He tried to motor back toward shore, but he ran out of gas. With no mast, no working sail and no fuel, he had no real way to control where the current took him.
"I cried for a whole week, just drifting south, like miserable," Sato said. "I felt like I was going to just try to turn my motor on and just suffocate, to kill myself, I felt hopeless."
"I was literally like a sitting duck, just getting taken south by the current going way off course," he added.
After five days of contemplation, Sato forced himself into action. Using PVC pipes and kayak paddles, he began jerry-rigging his sails and trying to repair his 32-foot boat. Slowly, over the course of a month, he worked his way back toward the shipping lane between California and Hawaii.
The effort kept him moving, but it did not solve his most urgent problem. Ten days before he was found, his drinking water ran out.
Sato filled buckets with seawater and tied plastic bags over them to seal them off, collecting the condensation that formed inside. It was nowhere near enough — but it was something.
"I was just licking that to survive," Sato said.
He ate mostly oatmeal, along with fish and squid that landed in his boat. With no one else to speak to, he called out for guidance, meditated, and talked to the water and the wind. He also felt the presence of his uncle, who had completed a previous sail from California to Hawaii with him when Sato was a young boy.
Then, after 44 days at sea, help finally came into view.
Watch standers 3M D'Abreu and AB Jaden Radcliff spotted Sato's boat aboard the Jones Act vessel M/V George III, operated by Sunrise Operations/Pasha. The Seafarers International Union said, "All hands were called to assist in the recovery of solo sailor Kaichi Sato aboard his de-masted 32ft sailboat approximately 900 miles from Hawaii."
QMEDs Larry Calixto, Lamonte McKinnon and Arturo Reyes helped prepare the engines for immediate maneuvering, while Recertified Bosun Gerardo Arroyo, ABMs Thyron Dy and Anthony Newbill, and Electrician Tom Flynn rigged the ship's pilot ladder and prepared life rings, messenger lines and life-throwing appliances. AB watch standers Radcliff, Bobby Belches and Florito Alegado also assisted in helping to maneuver the vessel toward the disabled sailboat.
Once the George III was close enough, Dy shot the line-throwing device across to Sato's boat. Sato pulled the attached messenger line in and made it fast to his boat's stern. Arroyo, Newbill, Dy and Radcliff then pulled the sailboat's stern to the pilot ladder, and Sato was able to step off his boat and climb aboard.
From the first sighting to the completed recovery, the rescue took approximately 1.5 hours. There were no hiccups or injuries, Capt. Veloni said.
Once Sato was safely on board, the crew gave him a suite, clothes and lots of food. The steward department — Recertified Steward Dien Short, Chief Cook Ahmed Hussain and SA Fahmi Amed — also provided him with a hot meal, including BBQ, and clean bedding.
"Oh my God, yeah, like ecstatic, you know what I mean? Like I was like crying and like so happy, and then they got me fruit and water, and yeah, they were so good to me, those guys," Sato said.
Sato expressed his thanks and gratitude to the entire crew of the George III for saving his life.
After the rescue, Sato stayed with a relative in Hawaii — and, incredibly, the ordeal had not put him off sailing. He was already planning his next sail, this time to the Philippines, in a bigger boat.
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