Out at Sea for 95 Days, a Peruvian Fisherman Clung to Hope

For 95 days, Máximo Napa Castro, 61, was alone and lost at sea, praying to God and clinging to the hope that he would one day see his mother again.

Without food or water, he ate cockroaches, birds and finally a turtle, whose blood he drank to slake his thirst.

He talked to God, getting angry at points. “I said to him, ‘What am I going to find here?’” he said. “Who’s going to save me?”

Then he asked for forgiveness.

“Someone is coming or a helicopter is coming,” he recalled thinking. “And then the next day, he sent me a helicopter.”

It was March 12, and Mr. Napa Castro, a Peruvian fisherman, had been spotted by the crew of an Ecuadorean tuna boat hundreds off miles off the Peruvian coast, the Peruvian news source RPP News reported.

He had been at sea since Dec. 7, when he left the Peruvian port of Marcona, Peruvian news outlets reported.