U.S. Army mariners came to the rescue of a fisherman clinging to a plastic cooler lid Friday off the western coast of Obi Island, Indonesia, according to the 8th Theater Sustainment Command.
The USAV Palo Alto, a 174-foot landing craft, was headed home to Japan from the Talisman Sabre exercise in Australia when Sgt. Seth Leonard, a watercraft engineer on the bridge, saw something ahead, according to an Army news release Monday.
“I noticed what looked like someone waving their arms, which is the signal for distress in water,” Leonard said in the release. “I grabbed my binoculars to see if my eyes were playing tricks on me and that’s when I saw someone about 1.5 miles directly in front of us.”
The fisherman had clung to the plastic cooler lid for hours after his boat capsized, Jon Daniell, a spokesman for the Hawaii-based sustainment command, said by phone Saturday from Indonesia.
“It was about the size of a boogie board,” Sgt. 1st Class Stefen Valencia, a Palo Alto crewman, said in the release. “I’m pretty sure that lid is what kept him alive.
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