Aussie sailor, dog stranded for 60 days in Pacific, rescued; lived eating raw fish

CANBERRA: A ship wreckage, a castaway, and life on a greeny island were all Daniel Defoe’s literary classic Robinson Crusoe. The fiction turned real recently after an Australian sailor Tim Shaddock went astray in the deep blue sea with his pet dog named Bella.

Tim Shaddock and his pet dog Bella pushed a living eating raw fish from the sea and drinking rainwater. For more than two months, Tim was caught in the long mirage of blue surrounded by a fiery north pacific sea.

Shaddock embarked on a journey from Las Paz in Mexico to French Polynesia. But weeks into the travel, the drifting boat got wrecked in a storm. The electrical setting went kaput leaving the sailor in the midst of blue as the possibility of a radio communication with land turned zilch. Later it was the Mexican authorities that saved the sailor and his pet dog.

Last Thursday, a Mexican Luna trawler accompanied by a helicopter found the wreckage of the boat and was shocked to see a man and one dog waving its tail.

Tim has always been a survivor. It came in the form of liver cancer in his life at a time when he was working in the IT field. Tim surpassed death by adopting a vegetarian regimen. He says it was an advanced case with doctors providing no respite, but his willpower to fight was gladiator strong.

The 51-year-old is still on his way back to dry land, where he will be met with further medical assistance. His companion Bella is also looking safe and well. Doctors say if not for such a positive mental attitude, it won't be any easy to survive in such vastness as the Pacific.