WATCH: Fisherman adrift in freezer for 11 days

A fisherman has survived 11 days adrift in a freezer. But, after being rescued, had to endure 16 days in prison.

Romualdo Macedo Rodrigues left Oiapoque (northern Brazil) in late July in a wooden boat approximately seven metres long to go to Ilet la Mere. According to Brazilian media, he planned to spend a few days fishing but his boat began to take on water during his trip and sank.

Rodrigues climbed into a freezer which he had on board and drifted for 11 days without food or water.

“What troubled me most was the thirst. This fridge, for me, was God. A miracle,” he’s reported as saying.

“I thought I was going to be attacked by sharks because there are lots of curious fish on the high seas,” he says.

Of his rescue, Rodrigues says: “I heard a noise and there was a boat above the freezer.

“Except they thought there was no one there. Then they slowly got closer, my vision was fading, and then I said, ‘My God, the boat’. I raised my arms and asked for help.”

Rodrigues does not know how to swim, so climbed into the freezer. He said he had no food or water and lost more than 10lbs during his ordeal.

Footage taken on 11 August shows when he was rescued 280 miles from where his boat sank.

Rodrigues had vision problems due to the heat, salt and light says the Daily Mail, and after the rescue boat returned to shore he was given first aid and then arrested in Suriname for being undocumented. The paper says he then spent 16 days in a prison in Paramaribo before being flown back to northern Brazil.

Police officer Luis Carlos Porto says: “He was very thin, debilitated, but in very good spirits. The wounds he had on his body, which were related to the sun, were already much better.

“He says he had vision problems due to the excessive heat, salt, and light, but he was very calm and in good health.”

Tales of survival against extreme odds continue to fascinate. But in August 2022, a French sailor, aged 62, survived 16 hours in an air bubble inside his capsized sailing boat in the Atlantic Ocean in a feat the Spanish coastguard labelled as ‘verging on impossible’.

Salvamento Maritimo, the sea search and rescue agency involved, says sailor Laurent Camprubi endured 16 hours in his overturned sailboat with ‘just 30 centimetres of air’.

Earlier in July, John Deer fell off his yacht in the Caribbean Sea and had to swim 17km to safety.

While casting a line out to catch fish in early June 2022, Deer’s foot slipped and he fell – untethered and without a life jacket – into the sea, in an area known to locals as Shark Point.

Deer (a solo sailor) was left, watching the boat he’d sailed halfway around the world alone drift over the horizon.

Main image of fisherman adrift in freezer courtesy of CEN.