Kai Sato, 39, embarked on an odyssey, but the trip he got was not the one he planned.
Two weeks into his first solo voyage from Catalina Island to Hawaii in June, the mast on his sailboat snapped, setting off an ordeal that lasted several weeks.
Sato, who could not be reached for comment, recalled his perilous journey to Hawaii News Now, the first news outlet to report the story. He said he tried to motor back on course but ran out of gas. His cellphone, which he was using for navigation, became water logged and inoperable, Sato said.
He spent a week crying, he said, and even contemplated suicide as he drifted away.
“I was literally like a sitting duck, just getting taken south by the current going way off course,” he told Hawaii News Now.
After days of despair, he said he made a different choice — to survive.
He improvised repairs using PVC pipes and kayak paddles to get his boat back on course. When his fresh water ran out on July 11, he collected drinking water by filling buckets with seawater and capturing the condensation beneath plastic bags he stretched over the buckets. He survived on oatmeal, fish and squid that landed in the boat.
According to Kato, it took him a month to make his way back into the shipping lane from California to Hawaii.
He endured the long weeks alone at sea by meditating and carrying on conversations with the ocean and wind. He said he sensed the presence of his uncle, who shared a California-to-Hawaii voyage with him when Sato was a youngster.
After more than a month at sea, Sato’s ordeal ended last week when the crew of a shipping vessel operated by Pasha Hawaii spotted and rescued him. Once aboard, he was given a suite, clothes and food.
“Oh my God, yeah, like ecstatic, you know what I mean? Like I was like crying and like so happy, and then they got me fruit and water, and yeah, they were so good to me, those guys,” he told the news outlet.
A spokesperson for the shipping company could not immediately be reached for comment.
Sato told the news outlet he was now staying with a relative and, despite his recent misadventure, was planning his next sailing trip, to the Philippines.
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