Two New Jersey Men and Dog Rescued After 10 Days Stranded in the Atlantic Ocean

Two men from New Jersey along with their companion poodle dog were rescued by crew members of a tanker vessel after 10 days of being stranded in the Atlantic Ocean, located 214 miles off the coast of the state of Delaware, United States. The two friends Joe DiTomasso, 76, and Kevin Hyde, 65, were sailors who voyaged on a sailboat called Atrvida II with a dog named Minnie earlier in December.

The said vessel reportedly lost power in the middle of the ocean for an unknown reason. Without fuel, DTomasso, Hyde, and Minnie found themselves adrift in the Atlantic for more than a week with only limited food and water. The trio were supposedly traveling to the south towards Florida. The tanker called Silver Muna brought them safely to New York and have been reunited with their families.

Stranded in the Atlantic Ocean

Hyde said during a news conference in New York that it was a miracle they were found at all, and they were out of the shipping lane at that time so the tanker was probably the last ship that would able to find them, as reported by The New York Times.

The two New Jersey men departed left the Garden State on November 27 but lost contact with their families on December 3. Although DiTomasso and Hyde were reportedly experienced boaters but their loss of communication concerned their families. The incident prompted US maritime authorities to search the two sailors.

Search Operation

In a statement, the U.S. Coast Guard said the men were taken into the passing gasoline tanker after more than a two-day search by both the Coast Guard itself and U.S. Navy airplanes, helicopters, as well as several commercial and recreational vessels, as cited by VOA News. The search operation kicked off the sailors' families contacted the Coast Guard on December 11.

The Coast Guard also said the two men who boarded the Silver Mauna were found to be in a good state of health and stayed on the ship until it reached New York City. The statement adds the two sailors, after leaving New Jersey, eventually lost contact with their families after departing from North Carolina towards their Florida route.

During the conference, Hyde told reports things were going very when they left North Carolina's Outer Banks port of Oregon Inlet. However, a storm moved in, blew off their original course, and destroyed their mast when they approached Cape Hatteras by the evening.

Related Incidents

Such incidents like the stranded two men and a dog in the Atlantic Ocean do occur.

In 2014, a fisherman named Jose Salvador Alvarenga was stranded in the Pacific Ocean for more than a year after embarking a fishing trip from Mexico in late 2012, according to Sky News.

In 2018, a British woman fell off from a cruise ship in the Adriatic Sea before being rescued after surviving for 10 hours adrift off the coast of Croatia.