An Australian man has survived after getting lost, in the Indian Ocean, for more than 28 hours. He fell overboard at night, during a storm. He thinks that he passed out and fell into the water.

He was on a surfing holiday, with friends, but got ill with food poisoning. He had gone to the side of the boat, to be sick, but got dizzy and fainted. When he woke up, he was in the water. He tried to swim after the boat, but it was too fast.

He was alone in the water for the next 28 hours. He was a strong swimmer, so he swam through the waves and thought about things from home to stop from falling asleep. He was very tired, and started to hallucinate.

But he saw some real things too. He was attacked by seagulls and touched by a shark. When he was found, he was 20 kilometres away from where he fell overboard. And he had lost nearly 6 kilograms in weight!

Vocabulary

Survive - to continue to live

Lost - unable to find your way

Overboard - go from a ship into the water

Pass out - to become unconscious

Fell - past tense of fall, lose your balance and collapse

Food poisoning - illness caused by bad food

Sick - to vomit

Dizzy - a sensation of spinning around and losing your balance

Faint - pass out, lose consciousness

Woke up - past tense of wake up, to stop sleeping

Alone - have no one else present

Wave - long, curling body of water

Hallucinate - to think you see something which isn't actually there

Attack - act against someone aggressively

Seagull - a bird that normally lives close to the sea

Shark - a large fish, normally a predator.

Think about

Which sea animals do you like, which are you scared of?

What would you think about, to help you survive?

Do you know of any other stories like this?