A man who survived for 15 months out at sea has told his fascinating story of survival and it’s insane.

When José Salvador Alvarenga left Mexico in 2012 with a friend for a two-day fishing trip, he wasn’t to know that he would end up out at sea for 438 days.

He spoke with former US ambassador for the Marshall Islands Tom Armbruster about what he went through to live with nothing there to sustain himself.

Alvarenga had been fishing for sharks in Mexico for decades, but on that fateful day, everything would change.

Alvarenga was 33 on the day of that trip and was meant to go fishing with a friend.

However, when the friend wasn’t available, he took inexperienced dayworker Ezequiel Córdoba, who was 22.

Initially, the trip was going well, so when a storm began to set in, they decided to keep fishing.

But this wasn’t a good idea.

The poor man was out at sea for over a year. (JOSE CABEZAS/AFP via Getty Images)

It was when they attempted to return to land, waves flooded the engine and they drifted out to sea, where they were hammered by the storm, losing most of the equipment they had on board.

The storm continued for a whole week and by the time it subsided, they were lost at sea.

The pair realised the only way they could survive was by getting creative with their hunting skills.

With no food or water with them, they decided to take to eating birds’ blood, turtles and fish.

However, by week 10, Córdoba had died after eating a bird that made him ill and he slowly wasted away, leaving Alvarenga on his own.

Armbruster told The Sun: “His companion, unfortunately, got sick, and then could not tolerate the bird diet, the bird blood in particular.”

When Alvarenga began hallucinating that he was talking to his dead friend, who was lying in the boat, he decided he had to let him go.

He said: “His companion stayed on board for a while.

José Salvador Alvarenga was forced to survive on turtles, fish and bird blood. (José Salvador Alvarenga)

“In fact, Mr Alvarenga spoke to him and then felt like he was going a little bit crazy, and he was buried at sea.

“He said that he was talking to the body, and think that then he felt like he was losing his mind a bit. You know that he was talking back to him.”

During his time alone out at sea, he did come across one instance where he could have been saved.

He saw a shipping container and waved down the boat, only for the crew on board to wave at him and continue on their way.

Armbruster said: “He saw a container ship go by and he signalled to it.

“The men on board the crew waved, and then just kept going, and you could tell that that really crushed him.”

“That was probably the moment where he lost faith and humanity and wondered if he was ever going to get out of this.

After everything Alvarenga went through to survive, he a finally found a tiny islet, which turned out to be a remote corner of the Marshall Islands.

On January 30, 2014, he swam to shore and found a beach house owned by a local couple who were able to wave down help.

A man who endured the nightmarish situation of being adrift at sea for 14 months did have one silver lining – he experienced the ‘best sex of his life’ while he was out there.

Back in November 2012, José Salvador Alvarenga set out from Mexico as he planned to make a 30-hour roundtrip with some deep-sea fishing.

He was joined by fellow fisherman Ezequiel Córdoba, who was 22 at the time. But soon into their journey, a storm set in and they decided to keep on fishing to see what they could catch

This ended up being a pretty bad idea, as they were caught in the bad weather for a week. They spent 10 weeks surviving on turtles, bird blood and fish but Córdoba became unwell and died on the boat.

However, Alvarenga ended up lost at sea for a whopping 438 days – during which he claims he had the ‘best sex ever’.

He was rescued in February 2014. (GIFF JOHNSON/AFP via Getty Images)

After living alone at sea, the bloke eventually washed up on the island of Ebon Atoll, about 6,700 miles from Mexico, and was able to get hope.

His wild ordeal was documented in the book 438 Days: An Extraordinary True Story of Survival at Sea.

Jonathan Franklin, who wrote it, spoke about Alvarenga’s unique experience in an episode of Slate’s How To Survive in the Wild podcast.

And this included explaining what the two lone fishermen did to stay sane while they were stranded at sea. Because obviously, they had quite a lot of time on their hands.

So, apparently, they got musical.

“They would just lay on their backs,” Franklin said. “[Córdoba] was a fantastic singer, so he would sing. And Alvarenga, who was not a great singer, would also sing. They would play lots of games with the stars and look at constellations.

Well, you can’t always get what you want. (ELIZABETH RUIZ/AFP via Getty Images)

“When they saw airplanes go by, they would imagine out loud, ‘What do you think they’re having?’ They would create these amazing feasts imagining what the people in the airplanes were eating.”

That’s not the only thing they imagined though as being out at sea with no one else meant they weren’t exactly getting much action.

Franklin described Alvarenga as a ‘badass fisherman who partied his brains out’ and ‘had three girlfriends’. Apparently, he would spend time imagining himself strolling down the beach and flirting with women.

“It’s this alternative reality that keeps him alive,” the journalist explained.

“And he said, ‘Jonathan, the best meals of my life were those imaginary meals I had at sea. The best sex I had in my life was the imaginary sex.'”

Yep, the best shag of this bloke’s life is apparently the fake one he dreamt of.

After Alvarenga was eventually rescued, his troubles were not at an end, as he ended up being sued for $1 million by Córdoba’s family, who accused him of cannibalism.

Alvarenga is adamant he didn’t eat Córdoba’s body, and instead buried him at sea.

His lawyer Ricardo Cucalon told Elsalvador.com at the time that he believed the suit was ‘part of the pressure from this family to divide the proceeds of royalties’ on Alvarenga’s book.

José Salvador Alvarenga was stranded in the Pacific Ocean for 438 days before he was able to make it back to dry land, and he wasn’t even rescued.

He set out from Mexico in November 2012 with the intention of making a 30 hour round trip including some deep sea fishing.

Accompanying him was Ezequiel Córdoba, a 23-year-old he didn’t know very well, and things went wrong a short way into their voyage.

Their boat was blown off course by a storm and became damaged, with the fishermen forced to dump around 500kg of fresh fish they’d caught.

Alvarenga was able to call for help on his boat’s radio before it stopped working, and with no way to move the boat the broken vessel began to drift in the Pacific Ocean.

José Salvador Alvarenga was stuck adrift on the Pacific Ocean for 438 days and no rescuer came to his aid. (GIFF JOHNSON/AFP via Getty Images)

Much of the fishing gear had become damaged by the storm as well, meaning that food supplies for the two men were low.

Search efforts responding to Alvarenga’s call for help only lasted two days before they were called off, and the fisherman said that Córdoba eventually refused to eat after becoming sick from eating raw food and starved to death.

Before he died, Córdoba asked that Alvarenga not eat his body – instead it was tipped overboard after six days as Alvarenga had started talking to it and was worried that he was going insane.

It would be 438 days before the surviving fisherman made it back to dry land, eventually washing up on the Marshall Islands in the middle of the Pacific thousands of miles from where he had first started.

Alvarenga said that at times he could see other ships, but couldn’t be rescued by them since he had no equipment that could signal his distress to them.

This was the boat Alvarenga survived in for 438 days. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)

With no flare gun, he couldn’t fire up a signal for help, and the part of the Pacific he was in was one of the quieter parts of the world’s largest ocean so his chances of being spotted by anyone else would have been few and far between.

He tried flagging down cargo ships that he could see in the distance but none of them picked him up, meaning there would be no rescue.

Instead he was forced to survive, eating the birds and fish he could catch, and drinking the blood of turtles to try and survive.

Finally on 30 January, 2014 he was able to drift close to Ebon Atoll, part of the Marshall Islands, abandoning his boat and swimming to the shore.

He was then rushed to hospital for treatment and later published a book about his 438 days lost at sea, However, Córdoba’s family tried to sue him as they claimed Alvarenga had cannibalised the body – something the fisherman denied.

A man who survived six long weeks lost at sea revealed the chilling pact his family and him made for in case they didn’t make it.

Yeah, I know, sounds like the plot of some drama movie on Netflix, but it’s very much a true story in the case of the Robertsons. Back in 1971, the family sold their farm, bought a boat and set off to sail around the world.

Named Lucette, the boat was the on-water home to Lyn and Dougal with their daughter Anne, 18, son Douglas, 16, and twin boys Neil and Sandy, nine.

Starting their epic voyage on 27 January, they sailed across the Atlantic for 18 months, making stops in the likes of the Caribbean.

Anne left the journey while they were in the Bahamas but her spot was soon taken by 22-year-old student, Robin Williams.

On 15 June 1972, things took a bad turn for the passengers when the Lucette was attacked by killer whales.

Having recently set sail from the Galapagos Islands, the boat sunk within minutes and the family and Williams had to get into an inflatable life raft along with a fibreglass dinghy.

He was just a teen when they sailed around the world. (LADbible TV/YouTube)

This then saw them spend 38 long days lost at sea despite only having water to last 10 and emergency food rations for just three.

Years later, Douglas shared details of the unbelievable ordeal with LADbible, including the eerie pact he made with his family.

On the very first day when things went wrong, the Robertsons and Williams made a deal that if things really got to the worst point, they would still never eat each other.

Thankfully, young Douglas had remembered learning about drinking turtle blood from the novel South by Java Head, which ended up saving their lives.

The family ended up hunting animals, eating dried turtle meat and drinking their blood – even catching and eating a five foot shark at one point.

The family on the Lucette. (The Last Voyage of the Lucette/ Douglas Robertson)

“You’ve got instinct, we knew that the liver of the turtle was poisonous. Never read it, you just looked at it and knew you couldn’t eat it, whereas the liver of the shark you could eat it,” he explained. “You’ve got this innate ability and you touch it in a situation like this.

“I’ve read other great survival stories where people have had the same experience and realisation comes to them what you can and can’t do.”

Eventually, the stranded group were spotted by a Japanese fishing trawler after they sent up a distress flare to get the boat’s attention.