At dawn, on November 27, three days before Cyclone Ockhi hit the Tamil Nadu coast, a group of 11 fishermen assembled at the harbour in Thengapattanam village in Kanyakumari district. They loaded fishing equipment, diesel, food, and hundreds of kilos of crushed ice, to preserve their catch, on to a wooden trawler boat, named St. Peter Paul and co-owned by 29-year-old fisherman J. Robinson.
“We were feeling upbeat. This was going to be the last fishing expedition for the year. We wanted to return home well ahead of Christmas and enjoy the break,” Robinson tells me.
Seated on a plastic chair in his modest home in Eraviputhenthurai village in Kanyakumari, Robinson is calm as he begins recounting the events that unfolded over the two days and three nights he and his friends spent in the middle of the Arabian Sea — holding on to plastic barrels, buffeted by Ockhi, and waiting for rescue that never came.
“There were no warnings about the possibility of rough weather when we set out,” he says. The team of men — aged between 19 and 36 — included six from Eraviputhenthurai and Vallavilai villages in Kanyakumari, and five from Nagapattinam district.
The first few days it was like any other fishing expedition. There was chatter and laughter, pranks and meal breaks. Then at 3 p.m., on November 30, the crew noticed unusually strong winds. By then, they were 100 nautical miles off the coast. The fishermen were used to strong winds; they would manoeuvre the boat in the direction of the wind to avoid damage. “But this time it was like a whirlwind attacking us from all different directions,” says Robinson. “There was nothing we could do.”
Unanswered calls
Soon, cracks developed on the boat as it was rocked by giant waves several feet high. Then the rain began. “It had become completely dark. We didn’t realise then that we would see the sun only two days later. It was as if the world was coming to an end,” he says.
Robinson and his friends tried frantically to connect with the Indian Navy and Indian Coast Guard through wireless communication on the Very High Frequency (VHF) Channel 16 — the distress frequency. “But all our calls went unanswered.” As VHF Channel 16 is kept open by all vessels, Robinson and his crew could hear similar distress calls from other boats nearby.
The rain lashed so hard it felt like they were being pelted with stones, says Robinson. Next, the glass panes of the boat’s wheelhouse and the light bulbs were smashed to pieces. And as the wireless equipment inside the wheelhouse got drenched, it stopped functioning.
The boat was now beginning to sink as it had broken in several places. “We knew we would have to jump into the ocean very soon.”
The fishermen decided to gather all the empty plastic cans lying around — some were diesel cans, others they used to mark the spots where their fishing baits were dropped — and tie them together to make a raft. Around 9 p.m., a huge wave tossed the boat up and when it fell back in the sea, it broke into pieces. But all the crew members managed to hold on to the bobbing chain of plastic cans and keep afloat.
“We could not see each other clearly through the rain and waves. Every now and then, a giant wave would take us down into the water. When we surfaced, we would shout out everyone’s names to make sure all were there,” says Robinson. The crew survived an entire night. But at least half the group was exhausted and barely hanging on to the plastic cans. The weather showed no signs of improving. “We just kept telling ourselves that the Navy or Coast Guard would rescue us.”
Losing hope
They were tired, afraid, and now caught in a current. They were also extremely thirsty. “We opened our mouths and looked up at the sky hoping to catch some rainwater. But we seemed to only be gulping seawater.”
By the evening of December 1, some of the men lost all hope of survival. That night three men disappeared. Two of them, T. Thanesh and J. Jinesh, the youngest in the crew, were never to be seen again.
The third man, R. Sibinan, was finally spotted in the sea and pulled up as he was drowning. “But he had swallowed too much water and was barely conscious. He died a few minutes later,” recalls Robinson. The team decided not to let the body go. They tied it to two large barrels. “If ever we were to return home, we did not want to tell his family that we lost him.”
By the next morning, the weather had improved and the sea was calmer, the sun shone. But they had lost their voices and could barely talk to each other. After two days in cold water their bodies, particularly their legs, had become numb. There were still no helicopters or rescue ships in sight.
Like a miracle
“The images of my wife, our one-and-a-half-year-old daughter, and the village kept flashing before my eyes, and I felt like crying, but could not,” says Robinson. As dusk fell, the men began to accept the possibility of death.
Just about then, there emerged a ray of hope. Quite literally. The group spotted a shaft of light from a lighthouse. They were near a shore. “It seemed like a miracle. Though we were too exhausted, we decided that we would swim towards the shore.”
With plastic cans tied to their waist, and all of them tied to each other, the men began to swim towards the lighthouse, taking with them Sibinan’s body. “Only four or five of us had some energy to swim. We pulled the others along with us,” says Robinson. They swam for 16 hours. On the morning of December 3, the team could clearly see a shore lined with coconut trees. They had reached Kalpeni island in Lakshadweep.
“It was incredible to feel the land beneath me, even though I could not stand,” says Robinson. He soon lost consciousness and crashed on the beach. “The last thing I saw was a group of men from the island running towards us.” The eight survivors, including Robinson, were admitted to a hospital on the island for three days.
Sibinan’s body was airlifted. The families of Thanesh and Jinesh are still not willing to accept their death and believe their sons too will miraculously return, says Robinson. Around 400 men from Tamil Nadu, who were in their boats when Ockhi hit, continue to remain untraceable.
Robinson admits that he is now daunted by the idea of venturing into the sea that has been second home to him throughout his life.
“I am afraid of the sea now. If another cyclone hits and the government fails to warn us or rescue us again, I may not survive to tell the tale.”
