As much as the men attempted to navigate and stabilize through the squall, the boat’s motor, radio, and GPS all failed, blowing them far off course and well beyond the Mexican Coast Guard’s limited reach. Expertly culled together from nine months of recollective personal interviews with Alvarenga as well as official search-and-rescue documentation, Franklin describes what was intended as a 30-hour expedition, but one that ran into stormy weather (forewarned to him by the boat’s owner).

Or vice versa.” It was during one of these lengthy fishing trips when he and young shipmate Ezequiel Cordoba ran into trouble. Since his arrival in the fishing village of Costa Azul four years prior, optimistic Alvarenga managed a unique work-life balance where “four-day drinking binges might be followed by ten days of non-stop fishing. Based on dozens of hours of exclusive interviews with Alvarenga, his colleagues, search-and-rescue officials, the remote islanders who found him, and the medical team that saved his life, 438 Days is not only “an intense, immensely absorbing read” (Booklist) but an unforgettable study of the resilience, will, ingenuity and determination required for one man to survive more than a year lost and adrift at sea.One man’s grueling odyssey across the Pacific Ocean on a crippled 25-foot fishing vessel.ĭocumentarian and journalist Franklin ( 33 Men: Inside the Miraculous Survival and Dramatic Rescue of the Chilean Miners, 2011) meticulously re-creates the harrowing voyage of Salvador Alvarenga, a fisherman whose boat lost motor power hours after leaving the coast of Mexico and was cast adrift upon the ocean in November 2012. He claimed to have drifted from Mexico, a journey of some seven thousand miles.Ī “gripping saga,” (Daily Mail), 438 Days is the first-ever account of one of the most amazing survival stories in modern times.

He could barely speak and was unable to walk. As gale force winds and ten-foot waves pummeled their small, open boat from all sides and nearly capsized them, captain Salvador Alvarenga and his crewmate cut away a two-mile-long fishing line and began a desperate dash through crashing waves as they sought the safety of port.įourteen months later, on January 30, 2014, Alvarenga, now a hairy, wild-bearded and half-mad castaway, washed ashore on a nearly deserted island on the far side of the Pacific. That night, a violent storm ambushed them as they were fishing eighty miles offshore.

On November 17, 2012, two men left the coast of Mexico for a weekend fishing trip in the open Pacific. Declared “the best survival book in a decade” by Outside Magazine, 438 Days is the true story of the man who survived fourteen months in a small boat drifting seven thousand miles across the Pacific Ocean.

438 days story