By Day 3, they began constructing a solar still using the tender’s plastic sheeting. Yield: 200 ml per day. Insufficient.
No one was looking. On Day 31, a mass of sargassum seaweed washed ashore, tangled with dozens of goose barnacles. The barnacles—boiled in salt water—provided protein and iodine. More importantly, inside the seaweed was a plastic crate stamped "M/V Star Asterisk, Hong Kong." Inside the crate: three sealed bags of dehydrated ramen, a tube of antiseptic cream, and a paperback romance novel in Thai. stranded on santa astarta
Their supplies: 12 liters of water (eight after the beach landing spill), two fishing handlines, 20 hooks, a stainless steel pot, a ferro rod, a multi-tool, two mylar emergency blankets, and 400 grams of emergency rations (crumbled). By Day 3, they began constructing a solar
By Day 5, Vasquez was showing early signs of hyponatremia: confusion, muscle cramps, a swollen tongue. She began recording voice notes into a dead phone, just to hear a human voice. On Day 8, a storm from the southeast threw debris onto the northern reef. Among the flotsam: a section of fiberglass hull, a shattered wooden pallet, and—miraculously—a 50-liter plastic water jug, unopened. It was from a Japanese long-liner, lost years ago. The water was brackish but potable after boiling and filtering through a cloth. No one was looking
By Day 40, they had constructed a semi-permanent shelter under a rock overhang on the eastern side of the island—away from the prevailing wind, closer to the tidal pools that reliably produced small fish and the occasional octopus. Vasquez and Kai faced an impossible choice. Their water jug was down to 10 liters. The solar still had degraded due to salt corrosion. No rain had fallen in 18 days. They could either stay put and wait for a rescue that might never come—or attempt to sail the tender 300 miles east toward the Tuamotu archipelago.