On November 17, 2012, Salvador Alvarenga set out from Costa Azul, Mexico on a two-day fishing trip. It was the last anyone would see of Alvarenga until 14 months later.
A storm caught Alvarenga and his shipmate before they could make it back to port. Thought dead for over a year, Alvarenga, but not his shipmate, appeared on the Marshall Islands nearly four thousand miles away from where he went missing.
The story seemed to much to believe for many, including Jonathan Franklin.
“Fourteen months, and [he] survived? It seems like too much of a Hollywood story,” Franklin tells Steve Fast.
Journalist Franklin conducted nearly 40 hours of interviews with Alvarenga and has written about the castaway’s experiences which included shark attacks, near-starvation and the loss of his shipmate. Sometimes it was innovative thinking and at other times it was good luck that allowed the fisherman to stay alive at sea.
“It really is kind of a one-in-a-million ,” Franklin says. “Most of us would never be able to find the food, the water, the shelter and the other part, which is extremely relevant is the mental makeup. You know, how do you keep from going mad?”
Franklin writes about Alvarenga’s tale in the book “438 Days: An Extraordinary True Story of Survival at Sea.”
Listen to the interview: Jonathan Franklin on The Steve Fast Show
Follow Steve Fast on Twitter @SteveFastShow
