Gemma
Sheridan and her two friends went on a trip in 2007. The trip was to take them
from Liverpool, across the Atlantic to the Panama Canal and then to Hawaii.
Unfortunately, after they passed the Panama Canal, things took a turn for the
worst.
A huge storm
took out all electronics, destroyed the boat and washed Gemma’s friends over
board. Gemma drifted for 17 days and then suffered another storm. During that
storm, Gemma was knocked unconscious. When she finally woke up, she found
herself on the beach, surrounded by her wrecked boat.
This is her
extraordinary survivor story:
“Within the
first hour I had a major panic attack. It was a disturbing feeling, being
isolated, alone and so far from home without any hope. I had been on water
rations for 2 weeks, so finding water was the first priority.There were no
pools of fresh water so I had to dig up a contraption that drew the water away
from the rock and provided for one drop every 40 seconds. That was my water
source, so it was coconuts until it drained. It definitely was not a great
start. The amount of energy everything took was beyond what I expected.”
“For the
first two weeks I stayed in a mock shelter I made from debris that washed
ashore. I needed to find real shelter so I found a large tree that looked
perfect. I scraped away at the bark of a tree with a giant clam shell for 11
days just to build a shelter. It took four weeks before I managed to light a
fire. You have no idea how happy I was when that happened. There were eight
goats on the island, for adults and 4 kids. I saw them on day one and they seem
to taunt me by coming so close I can almost touch them. I made a bow and arrow
but this just did not work and my spear was not sharp enough. So when the
hunting tools didn’t work I spent seven days building a trap with spikes on it.
But that was not good enough either. One day I was walking around the island
looking for crabs and I saw what I thought was driftwood. It was a goat. The
goat had been eating leaves when it got its horns stuck and panicked. It was a
massive thing and it was all meat, so I tried squeezing at its windpipe and
hitting it on the head with a clamshell. It took about 15 minutes to kill and
it was pretty gruesome. It showed me how far I was from being able to hurt
because even though it was trapped it still took me too long. “
“Fast forward
a few years and everything has changed. The physical side was tough but
ultimately fine. I did a series of exercises on the beach everyday. I managed
to get a to a stage where I was getting stronger. I had made a sign on the
beach that was about 10 feet high, but it had sat there all this time and
nothing came of it. So I decided to go all out I spent the next few weeks
clearing space and find materials to build a huge sign in the sand on the
beach. My hope was that perhaps a plane might fly over and see it, but in all
my time on the island, I had not seen one single plane. I did not give up
though.”
Fast forward
a couple more years. I woke up one morning to the sound of a plane flying over
me which was unusually low, I could not believe it, I thought I was in a dream.
I ran to the beach screaming and waving my arms like a lunatic. The plane flew
over two or three more times and then dropped a small package. Inside was a
radio, fresh water, food and a small medical kit. I switch on the radio and
heard the first human voice in years. We talked for what seemed like an
eternity, then I asked the voice on the other end “How did you find me?” to
which he replied “Some kid from Minnesota found your SOS sign on Google Earth”.
I didn’t even know what Google Earth was, but I’m eternally grateful and indebted
to them now”, explained Gemma Sheridan.
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This post was
republished from womendailymagazine.com. You can find the original post here.
