In December 2021, Canadian sailor Don set out solo from Colombia to Puerto Rico aboard a newly purchased sailboat he had bought sight unseen due to COVID restrictions—a decision he would later regret. A few hundred miles into the voyage, he encountered heavy seas that flooded the cabin and damaged the vessel’s electrical systems. With all communications and navigation down, he steered by compass and grabbed sleep in short bursts while lying hove to.

After days of exhausting hand steering, he fell asleep with the autopilot back online—only to wake up in the middle of the night when the boat slammed into a reef south of Isla de la Juventud, Cuba. With the vessel rapidly flooding, he scrambled into an 8-foot life raft with minimal supplies and his ACR AquaLink PLB. At the time, he didn’t know the antenna was damaged, causing the beacon to fail in sending a signal.

For three days, Don drifted farther out to sea, battered by surf and wind. On the third day, he inspected the beacon, repaired the antenna as best he could, and successfully reactivated it. This time, the signal reached Canadian authorities, who coordinated with the U.S. Coast Guard. Within 48 hours, the freighter Bulk Pangaea diverted course and miraculously retrieved him from the open ocean—a lone sailor saved by seamanship, satellite tech, and sheer resilience.