Boys' clothes 'rotted to rags'

A Bay of Islands man said he wouldn't believe a remarkable story of survival at sea if he hadn't seen it with his own eyes.
Yesterday Tai Fredricsen, first mate on New Zealand tuna vessel San Nikunau, told the Northern Advocate about finding three Tokelauan boys, starving, dehydrated and only just alive after drifting in a remote part of the Pacific Ocean for 50 days.
Mr Fredricsen had been at the helm of the San Nikunau, north east of Fiji on Wednesday, when he spotted a tiny aluminium dinghy a way off the bow.
As the vessel nudged closer, Mr Fredricsen and crew members who had gathered on deck saw three "skeletons" with mile-wide smiles waving at them.
Samuel Pelesa and Filo Filo, both 15, and Edward Nasau, 14, went missing from the Tokelau atoll Atafu on October 5. The boys, who had drifted 1300 kilometres across the South Pacific, had been given up for dead by their families. In recent weeks memorial services have been held for the boys.
During their ordeal they ate a couple of fish they were able to catch, and a seagull. The boys eked out rainwater when they could collect it but had resorted to sipping sea water, Mr Fredricsen said.
They would only have lasted a couple of more days, he said.
"They were nothing more than skin and bone. It would break your heart to have seen them... but their mental strength was incredible, their spirit and will to live was just unbelievable."
Mr Fredricsen said the boys were in such bad physical condition they had no veins strong enough to get an IV fluid line into. The crew trickled life-giving water into their mouths and gave them soft food over a few hours, tiny amounts at a time.
"They started to respond really well even within a couple of hours," Mr Fredricsen said.
Authorities and the vessel's owners, Sanford, were alerted and arrangements made for a Fijian coastal patrol vessel to rendezvous with the San Nikunau. Clothes were found for the lads whose own clothes had rotted to rags.
Then Mr Fredricsen carried out a task every bit as rewarding as coming across the missing boys had been.
"I managed to get some phone numbers off them. For instance Samuel was able to give me his grandmother's contact details and I was able to track the others' down," Mr Fredricsen said.
"I'll never forget telling their families they were alive and were coming home. There was all this ecstatic crying and elation at the other end of the phone."
The boys were on the San Nikunau for 48 hours before being transferred to the Fiji coastguard yesterday morning at 4.30am our time. Before saying goodbye Mr Fredricsen told them that, no matter where or when, any time they needed him all they had to do was call.
"They're in my life now. They and their experience touched the whole crew."
A second miracle was the Sanford-owned San Nikunau even being in the area. Having been asked to bring its catch to New Zealand instead of unloading at a Pacific port, the vessel was on a course it had never taken before.