William and Simone Butler – 66 days stranded on a raft

Time stranded: 66 days

Distance traveled: Under 50 miles

Terrain types: Sea

Deaths: 0

Situation ended: Rescued by Coastguard

Location: Pacific Ocean off Costa Rica

In April 1989, the Butlers decided to spend some time at sea in their 40-foot pleasure boat called “Siboney”. The plan was to spend a few days cruising around the coast of Costa Rica and maybe do a spot of fishing, and everything seemed to be going as it should. They left their home in Miami on April 14 and sailed all the way through the Panama Canal and were now in the Pacific Ocean. One night while sleeping, the couple were suddenly awoken by a loud thud on the side of their hull, followed closely by several more.

The Butlers lept out of bed and ran to the deck where they stood in shock at the sight of dozens of whales splashing around in the moonlight. They could only watch as the huge creatures played in the water all around them, most likely unaware of the damage they could do to the couple’s boat. It didn’t take long before one of the whales bumped the boat hard enough to crack the hull and send the ocean rushing inside.

Bill ran downstairs and tried to find the hole, shoving furniture and boxes out of the way to try to find where it was coming in, but before long the water had flooded half the lower deck, and he knew the boat was lost. Shouting to Simone to prepare the life raft, he began to gather some supplies and sent out several mayday signals on the radio, but none of them were heard.

It took less than 15 minutes for their boat to sink and leave them floating in the dark in a 6-foot raft. Since Bill was an experienced sailor he knew what to do in the event of a ship sinking so he grabbed everything he should have. The couple now had nine tins of food, two cans of crackers, and two 5-gallon jugs of water, as well as a few small bottles of water and some peanut butter. They also managed to gather a couple of blankets and some fishing gear, and the raft had a flashlight and 3 survival flares, so their situation could have been much worse.

They weren’t more than 50 miles off the coast of Costa Rica so they thought it wouldn’t take long for rescue to find them, but they were both unaware at this point that no one heard their calls for help on the radio.

The food rationing began right away, with each of them receiving an equal and tiny portion. Their nine cans of food and crackers only lasted them for 30 days, at which point they thought they wouldn’t be alive much longer. They both mentioned many times in interviews how frustrating it was to see ships on the horizon because it turns out they were stranded near popular shipping routes but their tiny 6-foot raft was impossible to see at such distances.

They topped up their drinking water with rain whenever possible, and because the raft had a canopy it made collecting it that little bit easier. Food was the real problem and the fishing kit Bill managed to grab didn’t have any bait with it. Dragging it into the water behind them didn’t prove useful and was done mostly to boost hope because both of them thought they were going to starve to death in a raft.

When a boat sits in the ocean it creates a submerged surface area and a shadow, two things that attract various sea creatures. The surface area and shadow are attractive to various tiny plants and creatures which in turn attract larger animals, and this is exactly how the food started to come in. One day Bill simply reached over the side and grabbed a turtle swimming by which the pair of them ate without hesitation.

A part of the meat was saved and Bill used it as bait to catch the fish swimming under their raft. He managed to catch about a kilo per day and ended up eating the larger portion since his wife hated fish. Simone was losing a dangerous amount of weight and hated the only food source they had, and it wasn’t until Bill said “Do you want to die? Do you want to ever see your children again?” she later recalled in an interview. “Then he would cut small pieces and tell me to imagine they were chicken.”

For the next few weeks storms and high winds would hit their tiny raft and spin it constantly in random directions, something they found very hard to sleep through. Sometimes the storms would last for days, but they weren’t as scary as the sharks. The ones that turned up were quite small and only interested in feeding on the small fish sheltering under the raft. This would happen every so often and usually wasn’t a problem, but one night a pack of porpoises turned up and a feeding frenzy began.

During the night something thrashing around under their boat ripped a small hole in the side of their raft, causing water to slowly flow in. They couldn’t find the hole in the dark and spent the next few hours scooping sea water out and getting soaked in the process. Bill managed to fix the hole using a repair kit in the morning, but it was a constant struggle to bail out the tiny amount that kept seeping in.

After spotting a merchant ship that was much closer than the others, the Butlers shot their last flare. The merchant ship saw it and signaled back, but for some reason just sailed off and left them there, an event that completely devastated what little morale they had left. The couple were hoping their daughter had alerted the authorities who would mount a search for them, and she did indeed call the Coast Guard and report them missing, but the problem was no one had any idea where to look for them.

The Butlers lay drained of energy and after the signal back incident had now given up hope. Bill had lost his fishing hooks and was using a method where he’d use his hand to swirl bait in the water and stab fish with a makeshift spear he made, but one fish caused a wound on his hand, and he was too weak to even kneel up and try.

The day after they had to watch the merchant ship sail away the Butlers were lying in their raft and waiting to die, when the faint rumble of a ship’s engine began to get louder and louder. They gathered the energy to sit up and saw a coast guard vessel coming right for them, Simone later said in an interview how they both burst into tears and lay there crying for a few minutes.

On August 19 rescue finally arrived and found both of them in a sorry state. Both had sores from the sun and salt water, with Bill’s back and Simones’s legs being especially bad, also they had each lost over 50 pounds and were badly malnourished and dehydrated, but ultimately nothing broken or immediately life-threatening. After a short stay in hospital and a much longer recuperation period, both of the Butlers made a full recovery.