A California sailor who vanished in the Pacific for nearly a month after drifting away from Hawaii has been found alive.
The voyage from California to Hawaii covers roughly 2,400 miles and can take weeks even in good conditions, which is why experienced offshore sailors rely on working sails, fuel, navigation gear, fresh water and redundancy when crossing the Pacific alone.
Kai Sato, 39, set out from Catalina Island on June 7, but his trip quickly unraveled when the mast on his boat broke less than two weeks later.
His problems only intensified from there.
About 500 miles off the California coast, Sato ran out of fuel. The phone he had been relying on for navigation also died, leaving him stranded and carried farther out by the ocean.
“I cried for a whole week, just drifting south, like miserable,”
Sato, now safely back on land, told Hawaii News Now, adding that the experience left him suicidal.
He said: “I felt like I was going to just try to turn my motor on and just suffocate, to kill myself.”
He also described feeling “like a sitting duck, just getting taken south by the current going way off course,” before deciding to give himself five days to panic and then focus on surviving.
Once that period passed, he began improvising repairs on the vessel using PVC pipes and kayak paddles.
Sato said it ultimately took about a month to make his way from California to Hawaii. During that time, he also exhausted his water supply and had to depend on survival techniques to stay alive.
Among those efforts was collecting seawater in buckets and using plastic bags to gather condensation he could drink.
“I was just licking that to survive,” Sato said, adding that oatmeal, along with fish and squid that ended up in his boat, became his main source of food.
After weeks lost at sea, help finally arrived when a Pasha Hawaii vessel spotted him and the crew brought him aboard.
Recalling the moment rescuers lowered a ladder, he said: “Oh my God, yeah, like ecstatic, you know what I mean? Like I was like crying and like so happy, and then they got me fruit and water, and yeah, they were so good to me, those guys.”
Despite the ordeal, Sato does not appear ready to give up sailing.
He is reportedly already planning to charter a larger boat and head to the Philippines, even though he had only just returned on Tuesday, July 21.
Solo crossings of the Pacific are often measured in weeks, and sailors making the run from the U.S. West Coast to Hawaii typically have to plan carefully for weather, currents and equipment failure because there is so little margin for error once they are far offshore.
Online reaction to that plan has been divided, with some praising his resilience and others questioning whether he should head back out so soon.
One person said: “he still hasn’t learn his lesson and wants to do it again smh.”
Another warned: ” Dude, take a hint from the universe and take a break because you might not be so lucky next time.”
Someone else said: “Wow all these negative comments! Way to go bro welcome back to civilization safe and healthy.”