Five Against The Sea [Paperback]

It was January 19, 1988. The waters were calm and the skies cloudless as five fishermen set off on a week-long trip off the Costa Rican coast. Five days later, their twenty-nine-foot wooden craft was foundering against thirty-foot waves as a dreaded north wind -- El Norte -- struck with full force. Set adrift in a badly leaking vessel, they faced the perils of more storms, shark attacks, near-madness, a mutiny, and bouts of starvation and thirst. Continuously bailing, the five men endured a record 142 days lost at sea -- until they were rescued 4,500 miles across the Pacific Ocean. ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Ron Arias has also written a novel, The Road to Tamazunchale, which was nominated for a National Book Award; Healing from the Heart, with Dr. Mehmet Oz, and the forthcoming Moving Target: A Memoir of Pursuit. An avid sea kayaker, he is married and living in Hermosa Beach, Calif. AUTHOR COMMENTS: My deep appreciation goes to the five fishermen and their families for enduring my endless, pestering questions about their lives before and during the nearly five months of the Cairo III's unintended, fateful voyage. The warm hospitality of the Costa Rican people also made my research stay a pleasant one. The many hours I spent individually recording the fresh memories of the five crewmen and others especially helped me in the recreation of their thoughts, conversation and actions during pivotal moments and interludes throughout their saga on land and at sea. I must also applaud the meticulous efforts of my friend Akihide Teraoka of Fujieda City, Japan, for interviewing a number of Japanese men who were key characters in the story of the five Costa Ricans. Additionally, I am pleased that John P. Kaufman, a publisher of nautical books, and his chief reader believed in the enduring, universal quality of this story, which first appeared in 1989 in book form with another publisher. For the present edition, I have made slight revisions throughout, mostly re-wordings and additiolC'