An Indonesian teenager miraculously survived almost 50 days alone in the shark infested-ocean. Aldi Novel Adilang, who’s currently 19, was found Aug. 3t in a rompong, which is shaped like a hut and floats in the middle of the sea but is anchored to the seabed by ropes. “Aldi said he had been scared and often cried while adrift,” Fajar Firdhaus, a diplomat at the Indonesian consulate in Osaka, told the Jakarta Post.
The teen was on the job 80 miles off the coast of Indonesia’s North Sulawesi, when strong winds ripped the hut from its mooring in July and sent it floating into the Pacific Ocean. Aldi ran out of cooking gas, so he burned the rompong’s wooden fences to make a fire for cooking. He fished for food, and he drank the saltwater by sipping the water from his clothes that had been wetted by the sea water. Officials have said that more than 10 vessels sailed by him. Every time they passed his hopes rose, and as they passed by he would think about his family and would cry because he would think about not seeing his family ever again.
From July 14th the teenager got blown away nearly 1,200 miles away into Japanese waters. The boat did not have any steering, so he could do nothing except let the wind take him. Then on Aug. 31, the bulk carrier Arpeggio caught a signal from the teen’s radio while passing him in the waters of Guam. He then landed in Japan on Sept. 6, got treated for everything and left on a plane to Indonesia right on Sept. 9 in good condition.