AS evening drew closer, the men prepared themselves for a second night at sea.

Their catch from the previous night had started giving off an odour.

Back on Pedro Cay, news began spreading that the men were lost at sea or dead. Friends would later report that the Coast Guard had been called in but did not come the same day.

The Smith family had been preparing for bed at their modest home that Sunday night in Union, St Elizabeth.

Homemaker Sandra Smith was already in bed, but not asleep. Her husband Roy, who works on a nearby farm, was preparing to join her but stopped to answer the family cellphone.

His heart sank as he processed the news that was being delivered. “Joel gone sea from Saturday and I don’t know if a lost dem lost,” his adult daughter Skeeta was saying on the other end of the line.

“How comes dem gone a sea and you nuh know weh dem deh? A tell you a tell me say Joel drown a sea and dead?” Smith exclaimed.

Sandra shot up from the bed. Her heart raced. Being hit with a tonne of bricks wouldn’t hurt this much.

She had fearfully anticipated this call ever since her son, to her displeasure, started fishing in 2000.

The family hadn’t seen Joel in three years as he spent his time between Rocky Point and Pedro Cay fishing. But he would call often. Just the week before he went missing, Joel had called home to say he was going to sea.

“Okay. No problem, but be careful because is a lot of people go out there and some of them died. Don’t let that happen to you and make sure the boat is in good condition,” Joel’s mother had told him.

He assured her he would be fine.

Sandra was about to scream.

“No sah, no bother cry because mi no feel say nothing happen to Joel.” Her husband comforted her while juggling the conversation with his daughter, who was saying that nobody knew for certain if the men were dead or just missing.

Sandra’s mind was racing just as fast as her heart was pounding. A thousand thoughts of what could have gone wrong clouded her mind. Could it be engine problem? Did they run out of gas?

Seventeen-year-old Janice Dias had that feeling. She could not tell exactly what it was. But it was that feeling. That feeling that gnawed at you, making you both uneasy and edgy at the same time, making you emotional, anxious.

Janice had tried calling her father on Sunday morning but did not get through.

When her mother, Sherene Phillips, told her later that day about her father’s disappearance at sea, a tearful Janice exclaimed, “That’s why me feel so. Mi call him this morning and couldn’t get through.”

The news also helped Phillips make sense of a dream she had on the Saturday night the men went fishing. In the dream, Dias, from whom she had separated in the late 1990s, was saying something to her. He attempted to kiss her but she drew away.

Dias’ mother, Authrin Blackwood-Thompson, was informed of her son’s disappearance on Tuesday, January 24. Blackwood-Thompson, who has a history of high blood pressure, had to battle to remain calm.

Andrew McFarlane was fishing in the waters off the coast of Westmoreland on Wednesday, the 25th, when he got the news that shook him to the core. After all, it was he who had turned his son on to fishing five years ago.

The men’s loved ones feared the worst, but, at the same time, hoped for the best.

Monday, January 23

The stranded fishermen woke up to find themselves far away from the spot where they had anchored. The rough sea had, overnight, tossed the boat around, loosening its anchor’s grip on the sea floor.

Breakfast was a half of bulla cake split evenly among the men. That left them with twoand-a-half pieces of the pastry they had packed for the journey.

By now, Saturday’s catch had gone bad and had to be dumped.

As evening fell, no rescue came and the men were worried because their food supply could not sustain them if they drifted for an extended period.

Their hope was faltering but they retained some level of confidence that the Coast Guard would find them during their regular Tuesday patrol in the vicinity.

Tuesday, January 24

Evening came, but there was no sign of the Coast Guard. The men continued drifting further out to sea. Food supply: Two bulla cakes.

Wednesday, January 25

No coast guard. The only craft the men saw was an aeroplane which they tried signalling. One-and-a-half bulla cakes left. Water supply: Drastically low.

Thursday, January 26

No help. The aeroplane wasn’t a surveillance aircraft from the Coast Guard as the men had hoped. One bulla cake left.

Friday, January 27

The men are edgy and running scared. They have taken to fervent praying. Half of a bulla cake left.

Saturday, January 28

A week at sea and no change in their situation. They kept drifting, further than they even knew. Their efforts to catch fish had been fruitless. They ate the last half of the bulla. Fresh water supply: Nil.

“Hard time a go start. Things a go get hard now,” Dias stated what they were all thinking.

“Father God, a wonder what we a go eat now,” said one of the men. At that moment, the men asked God to sustain them.

“You know say a so it go. We jus’ have to get some help,” Dias said. There was no sugar coating their predicament.

Day after day the men kept drifting. No food. No water. Praying. Hoping. Wondering when help would come. Just the open sea. No land in sight.

Out there, night seemed to follow day at the drop of a hat or vice versa. The sun seemed hotter. The men dealt with this by stripping down to their underwear and wetting themselves throughout the day. At nights, they slept under sheets of sponge to keep warm.

They had the terrifying wrath of an angry sea to cope with.

But there were moments of soothing calm as well. The sun dancing off the surface of the water when it was still, gave it a certain glittering sheen, a glass-like appearance, making it look like something that you would walk upon.

Though their stomachs ached from hunger and their throats were parched, the men marvelled at this wonder of nature. It made them forget their troubles, even for a moment.

Conversations were mainly about where the men think they may end up and how soon they would get there.

The intervals, however, would be long periods of quiet. Only the splashing of the sea. Not a peep from the three. Each in their own little corner of the boat, lost in thoughts of their families — mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, girlfriends, children — and how they must be handling the news of their disappearance.

Smith could not stop thinking that he should have followed his brother-in-law’s advice and not get on the boat that Saturday night. “If me did know,” he thought to himself.

Eventually, the men lost all track of time. Drifting, drifting, drifting. Miles upon miles. No help coming. Just them and their will to survive.

In the days that followed the depletion of their food and water, Smith took to drinking the sea water. He had remembered a fisherman saying once that if you are stranded you should drink sea water so that you would have power over the sea.

But after a few days he was getting sick from doing so. He began to spit blood, and had to stop.

Apart from this superstition, Smith had been drinking the sea water as a means of quenching his thirst. But now he needed a replacement.

One day, about 15 days into the drift, it came back to Smith: A story told by one of two survivors of an ill-fated fishing expedition of five men. Smith remembered the fisherman saying that he had to drink his urine to survive and refused to pass his faeces.

Smith had resolved to do whatever it would take to increase his chances of survival on the open sea.

So early one morning, without hesitating, Smith downed two cups of his own urine. It wasn’t water but it would do. He also decided to share this information with Dias and McFarlane so they too could increase their chances of survival.

“Yow, Medina?” Smith began to say, referring to Dias. “You know what mi remember? Bob dem did lost enuh and dem say dem haffi make up dem mind fi drink dem urine.”

Dias abhorred the idea. If Bob had survived by drinking his urine, that was his thing and if Smith wanted to drink his, then by all means. But he wasn’t about to join them. “Me caan manage that. Me haffi waste and mi caa drink mi urine.”

While Smith and Dias were conversing, McFarlane urinated in a container and tasted it. He quickly dumped the remainder. It was just too hard to swallow.

Later that morning, Smith downed another two cups of urine. When he was on his second cup, Dias and McFarlane turned around to see him gulping down.

“How it taste?” McFarlane wanted to know.

Smith was quick to encourage him. “Every man urine taste different. You have fi taste yours. Mi caan tell you how it taste.”

With that, McFarlane made another attempt at consuming his urine but again, he could not follow through after the first sip.

The next day though, the thirst was too great to bear and McFarlane went all the way. Both men also held their faeces. But Dias did not budge from his position.

Later, when Smith came down with severe stomach ache, Dias was quick to point out that it was because he had been holding his faeces and that he needed to defecate.

The men’s first meal after their supply ran out, countless days before, was a sea bird that landed in the boat.

Smith and McFarlane drank the bird’s blood and offered some to Dias. But Dias, having refused to drink his own urine, sure as hell wouldn’t be drinking bird’s blood.

“Mi good, man,” Dias declined.

The men roasted the bird using scraps of sponge and pieces of rope for fuel.

Their next meal, consisting of two fish, wouldn’t be until many days later.

The extended period at sea without food and water was beginning to wear on their bodies. Their clothes hung on their emaciated frames like scarecrows in a field. They were mere flesh and bones. Their eyes had sunk into their heads, like a turtle withdrawn into its shell.

The daily task of bailing water from the boat was becoming impossible.

The ordeal had also begun to take an effect on their minds, putting them on the brink of insanity. At times, the mood in the boat would swing like a pendulum from that of perseverance to wanting to just die.

Of particular distress to the men was that numerous ships had passed them by without rendering assistance, no matter how much they signalled.

One day Smith finally snapped. “If mi did know. If me did jus’ hear what Norman say. You see me come a sea and watch deh. If me did know, man.”

Related story:

28 days adrift at sea – Part 1

Tomorrow: The Conclusion. A closeencounter with death. The captain dies and land at last!