Man Goes Overboard And Survives 28 Hours Floating In The Indian Ocean

This has the makings of a Hollywood horror story written all over it.

It’s everything I fear in life wrapped into one story:

-> Going overboard at sea
-> Not being able to see what’s underneath me
-> Having no one around to hear my calls for help
-> Dying a slow, terrifying death with no one by my side

I think a lot of people fear the ocean for many of these same reasons. And, you know, getting eaten by an apex predator is probably high on most people’s list as well. For good reason, too. Humans haven’t evolved to thrive in the water. We’re not great swimmers, we can’t see very well, and we have little in the way of defense when we’re wading through the waves.

It’s for ALL these reasons that this story is the most terrifying story I’ve read in a long time.

It was 2:30 a.m. local time on April 17, 2013. The weather was stormy. The sea was dark.

On board the hired boat, the Naga Laut, were 10 South African men on a surfing trip off the Indonesian coast. Brett Archibald, then aged 50, was one of those men — he had succumbed to intense food poisoning.

Archibald had gone to be ill over the side of the boat. He then got dizzy and blacked out. When he awoke, he was in the water and the boat was 10 to 15 meters ahead.

“I just watched the lights of the boat disappear. I screamed, I screamed with everything I had in my lungs, but I realised very quickly that they were never going to hear me.” — Brett ArchibaldBelow, Archibald shows exactly where he was on the boat when he fell into the water.

Everyone’s worst fear became Archibald’s terrifying reality in the briefest of moments. 

“I swam with everything I could, but there was no way I was going to catch a boat…” As the boat continued into the distance he remembers staring at the sky, his ears pricking up at the sound of an animalistic cry that was coming from within.”I thought there was a hyena in the water — it was a manic, crazy laugh. I looked around me and it was me. It was this crazy noise coming out of my throat, like hysterical laughter,” he told the BBC.

Find out how Archibald feared he was going to lose his eyes on the next page.