He needs to buy a lottery ticket - NOW!

I'm amazed at the reported survival of a Nigerian cook for two days underwater after his ship sank.  Via Yahoo! News, Reuters reports:

After two days trapped in freezing cold water and breathing from an air bubble in an upturned tugboat under the ocean, Harrison Okene was sure he was going to die. Then a torch light pierced the darkness.

Ship's cook Okene, 29, was on board the Jascon-4 tugboat when it capsized on May 26 due to heavy Atlantic ocean swells around 30 km (20 miles) off the coast of Nigeria, while stabilizing an oil tanker filling up at a Chevron platform.

Of the 12 people on board, divers recovered 10 dead bodies while a remaining crew member has not been found.

Somehow Okene survived, breathing inside a four foot high bubble of air as it shrunk in the waters slowly rising from the ceiling of the tiny toilet and adjoining bedroom where he sought refuge, until two South African divers eventually rescued him.

. . .

Divers broke into the ship and Okene saw light from a head torch of someone swimming along the passageway past the room.

"I went into the water and tapped him. I was waving my hands and he was shocked," Okene said, his relief still visible.

There's more at the link.  That man's the living definition of 'lucky'!

I can't help but grin at the thought of the shock the diver must have experienced when someone touched him in the blackness of the wreck.  Two days after the sinking, he must surely have assumed that everyone still aboard was dead.  Could that be described as a 'brown-wetsuit' moment?





Peter