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Dramatic story of a diver lost at sea
After 40 hours challenging sharks, waves, injuries and dehydration, Christopher Perez Rios began to die. Today is recovering in a hospital in Ponce
Rios Perez recovering in the Hospital Damas de Ponce.
By Ricardo Cortes Chico
Ponce - Do not know exactly how it happened but on Saturday, about noon, when the diver Christopher Perez Rios went up to "boogie" the harpoon was fired and the butt hit his nose.
Pérez Ríos, who was born in Cayey, was offshore. Dizzy. On the table that kept him afloat was to clean the blood. When reassembled, and the boat he had arrived, along with two fellow divers, was about two miles away. The tide had washed up there.
He tried to swim but the efforts were useless. It was going against the grain. His companions began to notice her absence for him. He saw them but they did not locate it. The fishing day, as many had since childhood, ended his shipwreck.
At that moment he remembered that this area had many sharks, he said. And no wonder. According Yartiza Fernandez, wife of drowning, rescuers who worked on the search for her husband about six sharks sighted in the area.
"I was scared. I knew that there are no sharks 200 pounds and I am of the generation that saw the movie Jaws, "Perez said jokingly yesterday Rivers while recovering from his long voyage at sea in the Hospital Damas de Ponce.
I had the mask he used to dive underwater. The lost to the impact received from the harpoon. He had no protection. So when trying to swim by the waves, did nothing to swallow water. Yet he continued. Her goal was to Caja de Muertos. Once there he could request assistance from the guards.
But when he approached the shore, the tidal changes dragged out to sea again.
"I became as one kilometer from Caja de Muertos," he said. But try as they could not reach the coast. And then night fell.
"I was very cold. The spend as much time awake. I could not sleep. It was a time forever, "he said. That night still trying to come to earth but with the same results.
The sunrise, however, Rios Perez brought a ray of hope. A small boat passed near where I was. The exact point do not know since I was in high seas. Just remember who started to shout and call for help. And listened. The boat began to move toward to him. It was what waited all night for a way out of despair, the frustration of not being able to exit the water. But the boat never came up to him. As about 300 feet he stopped and turned around despite his cries for help. Crew could only say that the physical aspect that had seemed foreign, perhaps Americans.
The sun was so exhausted on Sunday. That day he decided to try to swim to the south coast. Caja de Muertos reach seemingly impossible by currents.
In those solitary moments in your family just thought, if ever see in their desperation, frustration. Managed to see rescue helicopters in the distance but failed to locate. As he approached the Big Island the currents returned to betray him and dragged him to shore. It was the same thing that happened before when trying to reach Caja de Muertos. In the midst of that frustration cry, but tears would not come out.
Was dehydrated, burned by the sun, weak and hungry. On Sunday night, after numerous attempts to save his life, began to die, he said.
"What I did was sleep in the 'boogie' and ask God's mercy and beg forgiveness for my sins," he said.
He tried but could hardly sleep. The constant waves, six, eight and ten feet, whipping and woke him. On Monday morning, after about 40 hours at sea a Coast Guard helicopter found him floating in the table, in part, had saved his life. Soon after, a boat came up to him and rescue him help them. "At that moment I thought at least if I died I could resurrect" he joked as he showed his injuries on their journey at sea.
They put an IV, gave him food and water. He was then brought to the mainland and from there to the hospital where he was being treated for burns, dehydration and hypothermia.
"I thought when I rescued was that God had heard me," he said. He thought, because at that time, his weakness, he could hardly speak.
good interpretation.
