They now had 30 more days of water security. Time to think long-term. Time to accept that being might become a way of life.
"That moment—kneeling in the surf, holding that jug—was the closest I've ever come to religious ecstasy," Vasquez wrote. stranded on santa astarta
For two days, they drifted. Satellite phone? Destroyed by impact. EPIRB? Submerged in a flooded locker. On April 17, a rising swell pushed them toward a wall of jagged basalt. Vasquez made the call: abandon ship. They launched a 10-foot inflatable tender with a single paddle, 12 liters of water, a fishing kit, a waterproof bag of journals, and a broken VHF radio. Four hours later, they crawled onto a black sand beach on the leeward side of Santa Astarta. They now had 30 more days of water security
But on the morning of Day 60, just as they were preparing to launch, Kai spotted a light on the southern horizon. It moved. It blinked. It was not a star. The vessel was the MV Pacific Hope , a 600-foot Liberian-flagged container ship en route from Callao to Sydney. A deck officer on night watch had noticed a periodic flash on the radar—too regular for a wave, too small for a ship. He had diverted 14 miles off course to investigate. "That moment—kneeling in the surf, holding that jug—was
The disaster struck on the night of April 14. A rogue wave—estimated at 14 meters—broadsided the vessel 30 miles southwest of the island. The impact sheared the rudder post, cracked the fuel tank, and flooded the engine room. Within hours, Siren’s Call was a dead hulk adrift in the Humboldt Current.
"It felt like the island was sending us care packages," Kai later told rescue officials. "Except the address read 'To anyone dying here.'"