:quality(85)//arc-anglerfish-arc2-prod-infobae.s3.amazonaws.com/public/7K3DUOY4RBG6ZD5UOLTHVNJA5M.jpg "A castaway in Queens, New York: he went sailing with his kayak and ended up on a desert island")
A 36-year-old teacher at a Forest Hills, Queens high school was rescued by the NYPD after being 12 hours stuck on a desert island for a kayak trip gone wrong.
A video posted by rescuers showed that the man, like he was tom hanks in the famous movie Castaway, he had written the word HELP with different sticks in the sand and lit a fire to alert the distance to his situation.
With a helicopter, New York rescuers detected the call for help and approached the small island of Jamaica Bay to discover the man who jumped and waved his arms in a moment of happiness after so many hours of uncertainty.
Back at home, the unfortunate navigator explained to the chain CBS who had set out in his kayak Thursday morning to get to Ruffle Bar, a territory two miles offshore from Floyd Bennett Airfield in Brooklyn, and quickly back. “It was a social distancing activity,” joked the protagonist of the event that asked not to be identified.
The weather conditions were good to start the adventure, but when I had to turn back the wind had picked up and the waves were strong. He hadn’t been halfway there when the kayak began to sink. “The kayak tipped over and I fell over,” he said.
He had to swim back to the 56 hectare island, with wet clothes and phone. “I found a lighter, and it miraculously worked, so I lit a little fire on the beach,” he said. But the hours passed and nobody came. “He was likely to spend the night there,” he recalled.
“I found a couple of coconuts, so I opened them and drank some water,” he said. And he added that later he began to pick up waste on the beach and his plan was to build a raft and try to row back to dry land in the morning.
But before dawn, he heard the drone of a helicopter. “The guy landed and said, ‘Are you coming with us?’. The teacher said he felt guilty for taking time away from rescuers.
“The men in the ambulance were two people from Illinois who came specifically to New York to deal with the COVID-19 situation,” he explained. “I felt a little embarrassed that I was wasting those resources … but everyone was very nice to me and I’m glad I got out of there,” he concluded.
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