Man Survives Night Alone in Shark-Infested Sea After Falling From Boat
The incredible survival story of John Deer, an Australian sailor who fell off his boat in shark-infested waters, only to save himself by swimming 9 nm in the dark. The tricks that helped him beat the odds.
John Deer, an Australian sailor who has been touring the world since 2019, slipped while sailing, and fell into deep water full of sharks.
His boat, which was sailing on autopilot, continued on its way, leaving him abandoned in the middle of the sea. He still expected the worst. a sea full of sharks that forced him to swim 17 kilometers to save himself.
“I remember hitting the water and when I saw my brco go on, I thought, this is it, I’m done, I’m going to die,” said the young man who set sail in 2019 from Greece with the idea of traveling the world.
“It happened so fast. I put my foot in the wrong place and suddenly I’m in the water watching my boat go away, completely helpless. I started yelling ‘no, no, no!’”
The area where Deer fell is known as “shark point” because of the number of predators that lurk in those waters. His downfall occurred when there was only an hour of daylight left and he had no lifeguards.
This many is the worst that could happen, suddenly I found myself in the water, and my boat sailing away from me quickly. It was 17 kilometers out to sea,”
“I knew I had to stay calm and conserve my energy if I wanted to have any chance of survival.”
He then began a routine alternating breaststroke and frogstroke, heading toward where the land was. The journey was not easy, as he swam in waters plagued by sharks.
At one point, he felt something bite his foot and panicked. “Afraid it was a shark, I went into a frenzy. I started screaming, kicking and hitting in all directions to scare him. I knew I had limited energy, I was getting so tired that I decided to keep swimming.”
“I soon realized that it was fish that were nibbling at me. They just wouldn’t leave me alone, they were the size of my forearm and kept biting my body and legs. I have bite marks and cracks all over my legs from them.”
Already exhausted, John continued swimming and came up with an ingenious method of calculating how far he was from land. “I extended my arm and the earth completely covered my hand at first. I checked again what I thought was about an hour later and could see a bit of the mountain on either side of my hand.”
In the morning, after swimming to the next point at first light, he felt that he was drifting. “I found a decent sized stick and put my t-shirt on the end to use a signal to signal passing boats. The first one didn’t see me, so I climbed to a more visible spot higher up. The second boat saw me and waved back, but kept going.”
And finally, a third party came to my rescue and agreed to take me to the border town I was originally headed to after seeing the despair and tears in my eyes.”
When he reached the shore, he found out that his boat hit some rocks and was destroyed. Consequently, his trip to travel the world was cut short.
However, even with the pain that his dream ended abruptly, the sailor thanked for the miracle of saving himself.
Now comes the daunting task of dealing with the ship, which in the blink of an eye has gone from being my greatest asset to a huge responsibility. Most of all I’m glad to be alive. Possessions come and go. And it’s been a great journey so far: from Greece to Panama in 3 years. It is sad that he cannot continue the journey back to Australia as planned. But I guess life had different ideas for me,” he concluded in his Instagram post.
