A resident of Australia tried to cross the Pacific Ocean on a homemade boat, overturned and called rescuers.
24-year-old Tom Robinson was picked up by the crew of the cruise liner Pacific Explorer in the morning of October 6 south of the island nation of Vanuatu. The traveler was sitting on an overturned paddleboat. He was badly sunburned and thirsty, but was not seriously injured.
Robinson had wanted to cross the Pacific Ocean alone on a paddleboat since he was a teenager and became the youngest navigator to do so. In July 2022, he set sail from the Peruvian capital of Lima to his hometown of Brisbane. The first passage to the Cook Islands took him 160 days. After anchoring there, it took him 70 days to reach Vanuatu. The journey of two thousand kilometers to the finish line in Brisbane was the last leg of the route, but a few days after entering the ocean, Robinson’s boat capsized.
The sailor expressed his gratitude to the Pacific Explorer crew and the ship’s medical staff for their assistance. He also said that during the voyage, he was blown off course several times due to storms and also had frequent encounters with sharks. “They are friendly most of the time… but they bit my oars,” he shared his memories.
Whether Robinson is going to try to cross the Pacific Ocean on oars again is not yet known.
