Australian castaway Tim Shaddock: ‘I’m just so grateful. I’m alive and I didn’t really think I’d make it’

It has been three months since Tim Shaddock, a 54-year-old Australian sailor, and his dog Bella last set foot on dry land. Shaddock had set sail from La Paz, in Baja California Sur in Mexico, bound for French Polynesia, a journey of more than 6,000 kilometers (3,728 miles). However, a storm damaged his boat. Weeks later, a tuna vessel came across the catamaran, adrift in the Pacific Ocean. On Tuesday, after months of eating raw fish and drinking rainwater to survive, Shaddock made landfall again in the port of Manzanillo, in the Mexican state of Colima. “I’m feeling all right. I’m feeling a lot better than I was, I tell ya,” he told the media as he stepped off the boat.

The helicopter belonging to the tuna vessel María Delia, captained by Óscar Meza, spotted Shaddock adrift in a damaged boat in the middle of the Eastern Pacific Ocean, in international waters, more than 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) from the coast. “To the captain and fishing company that saved my life, I’m just so grateful. I’m alive and I didn’t really think I’d make it,” he said.

At the time of the rescue, after three months at sea, Shaddock was showing signs of dehydration and sunstroke. Grupomar, the company that owns the tuna trawler, said he and Bella were both in a “precarious” position and had been without adequate provisions or shelter. Crew members provided water, food and medical attention.

The Australian sailor explained his passion for the sea when speaking to reporters after disembarking the María Delia and said he plans to sail again soon. Shaddock had previously traveled on his catamaran, the Aloha Toa, in other parts of the world. “I have been through a very difficult ordeal at sea,” he told Australia’s 9News. “I’m just needing rest and good food because I have been alone at sea a long time. Otherwise, I’m in very good health.” On Tuesday, although dishevelled, Shaddock said he “felt great” as he once again touched dry land. “There were many, many, many bad days and many good days,” he said. “The energy, the fatigue is the hardest part.”

The last time Shaddock saw land was in the Sea of Cortez in the Gulf of California, at the beginning of May, under a full moon.

Grupomar notified the various authorities, from the Ministry of the Navy to the Australian Embassy, of the rescue so that legal protocols could be initiated to allow the shipwrecked Australian to return home to Sydney.

Antonio Suárez, Grupomar’s president, said Tuesday that the voyage during which the María Delia rescued Shaddock may have been its final trip, because he is modernizing the company’s fleet and the boat is its smallest and more than 50 years old. If so, it would be a “marvelous farewell, saving human lives,” Suárez said.

Shaddock hugged Suárez in gratitude, and Suárez invited him to go for a meal in celebration.

When asked what he would like to eat back on land, Shaddock, smiling and jovial as he slid into a waiting car, said “tuna sushi.”

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition