“I had no food. There was only a bottle of ketchup that was on the boat, garlic powder and Maggi [seasoning cubes]. So I mixed it up with some water for me to [have a chance to] survive 24 days in the sea.”
Francois was not a sailor and did not know how to navigate or use any of the equipment on the boat.
The boat was letting in water and he had to keep bailing it out to stop it from sinking, he said. He tried various ways to attract attention, including carving ‘help’ on the hull of the boat and lighting a fire to send a distress signal to passing boats, but none of them saw him.
He was eventually rescued after using a mirror to catch the glare of the sun and was spotted from the air 120 miles northwest of the La Guajira peninsula, nearly 1,000 miles southwest of where he had started out.
A nearby civilian container ship picked him up and took him to the Colombian port city of Cartagena.
Francois said: “Twenty-four days, no land. Nobody to talk to. Don’t know what to do. Don’t know where you are. It was rough. It was very rough. I don’t know how I am alive today, but I am. And I am grateful for that.”
A video released by the Colombian Navy showed a doctor examining Francois, who appeared to be healthy.
In a statement, the Colombian Navy said: “Without having any knowledge of navigation, he was lost and disoriented at sea.
“His efforts to manoeuvre the vessel and the equipment on board were to no avail.”
It added that although in good health, he had lost weight.
Following his rescue, Francois was handed over to the immigration authorities to co-ordinate his return to the island nation of Dominica. The sailboat he had been working on was abandoned at sea.
Nutritionists discourage eating large amounts of ketchup owing to its high sugar content. A 15-gram serving of ketchup is about 15 calories and contains 0.3g of salt and 3.5g of carbohydrates, of which 3.4g are sugars.
