Sailor Rescued After 66 Days at Sea, Surviving on Rainwater, Fish and 'Prayer'

A sailor who has been missing since January this year was rescued on Thursday floating on his stricken boat 200 miles off the coast of North Carolina, surviving that long by collecting rainwater, eating fish he caught while at sea and saying "lots of prayer" for help, reports said.

Louis Jordan, 37, set sail from a marina in South Carolina on Jan. 23 and was rescued 66 days later on the overturned hull of his sailboat.

"Every day I was like, 'Please God, send me some rain, send me some water,'" Jordan told WAVY-TV soon after he was rescued.

Jordan's prayer was answered when the crew of a German-flagged container ship found him on Thursday afternoon floating on his 35-foot vessel, the Angel.

The survivor said he could not believe it at first that the ship that was about to rescue him was real. The vessel's crew did not see him until Jordan started waving his arms.

"I waved my hands real slowly, and that's the signal 'I'm in distress, help me,'" he recounted to WAVY. "I blew my whistles. I had three whistles. They never heard them. I turned my American flag upside down and put that up. That says, 'rescue me.'"

The sailor said heavy seas caused his boat to overturn, destroying its mast, rudder and radio. However, his body showed no obvious sign of injury.

Doubters wondered why Jordan appeared to be in good shape despite his allegedly gruelling ordeal, noting that he seemed to be well-fed and with pale, unblemished skin. Moreover, he declined medical help despite claiming to have broken a shoulder.

The sailor responded to sceptics in an interview with the Daily Mail on Sunday, saying: "God knows I am a truthful man."

He said the authorities had checked he had not withdrawn money from his bank account when he first went missing.

But British survival expert Erik Kulik expressed skepticism on Jordan's story. "I would have expected him to be severely dehydrated. After that amount of time at sea he would have been wobbly on his feet and yet he seemed to walk perfectly. He says he broke his right shoulder and yet he didn't even seem to be guarding that shoulder in the pictures I saw after the rescue. There is a lot that doesn't add up," Kulik said.

Jordan claimed his shoulder injury had healed, saying: "I have a bump but it's fine. I feel no pain right now. After two months at sea it healed."

He said he survived through "lots of prayer" and catching seaweed, crabs and fish by trailing dirty laundry off the hull.

"One day I caught a jellyfish and I know you can eat some types of jellyfish. I put it to my lips and it stung so badly...I spat it out. I had to put charcoal in my mouth for 45 minutes to suck out the toxin," he said.

He also described his dramatic encounters with two killer whales which, he said, had "such beautiful faces, they looked so friendly." He also mentioned that he floated on shoals of glowing phosphorescent jellyfish at night.

How exactly Jordan survived for more than two months at sea was also still unclear, according to Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer Ryan Doss.

"We don't know where he capsized," Doss said. "We really won't know what happened to him out there until we talk to him" at length, he added.

"We don't have any reason to doubt him but nor can we confirm he spent all this time out there. We are looking forward to learning more about what exactly happened. We are as keen as anyone to find out the truth," a U.S. Coast Guard statement said.

The Coast Guard in Miami was notified of Jordan's situation by his father, Frank Jordan, on Jan. 29, said Marilyn Fajardo, a spokeswoman for the Coast Guard's 7th District. A week later, Jordan was still missing.

Jordan failed to file a "float plan" – the nautical equivalent of a flight plan – that would have revealed his route, said the Coast Guard.

"We're elated that he survived. We were never able to determine where he was headed," said Doss. "Without that as part of the equation, it was difficult to come up with a search area."

Jordan was later airlifted by a Coast Guard helicopter crew from the ship to a hospital in Norfolk, Virginia, on Thursday night.

He refused treatment at the hospital as he was in good condition, said Sentara Norfolk General Hospital spokesman Dale Gauding. He left the hospital with his parents around 2 a.m. of the next day.

Jordan made his sailboat his home at a marina in Conway, South Carolina, until that fateful day in January, when he told family members that he would be fishing in open water.