According to the information, the three amateur captains set off from the Khabarovsk region in the Russian Far East to the island of Sakhalin on August 9th, but never arrived there.
Two dead on board
The rescue workers suspected that the boat had been carried by the current towards the Kamchatka Peninsula, but a search with helicopters and an airplane was unsuccessful. The dinghy was finally found on Monday in the Sea of Okhotsk, a marginal sea in the Pacific – around 1,000 kilometers from its starting point. “At around 10 p.m. on October 14, the boat was discovered passing a fishing boat,” the prosecutor’s office said. There was one survivor and two dead on board.
“I don’t have much strength”
Prosecutors released a video showing the bearded survivor wearing a life jacket shouting to the crew of the fishing boat: “I don’t have much strength.” But then he manages to grab a rope. The fishing boat’s captain, Alexei Arykov, told RIA Novosti news agency that survivor Mikhail Pichugin was “thin” but “conscious.” The fishermen brought him ashore in the city of Magadan.
Lost 50 kilograms
Pichugin’s wife Yekaterina told RIA Novosti that her husband’s rescue was a “miracle.” The three boaters, who come from the city of Ulan-Ude in Siberia, only had food and water for two weeks. Her husband probably survived because he was overweight: “He weighed about 100 kilograms.” Russian television reported that he had lost 50 kilograms.
As the newspaper “Komsomolskaya Pravda” reported, citing family members, Pichugin, who works as a driver in Sakhalin, invited his 49-year-old brother Sergei and his 15-year-old nephew Ilya to the boat tour. So they wanted to watch whales.
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