Two migrants survive 11 hours at sea on oil drums after boat runs out of fuel
Two young migrants have survived an extraordinary 11-hour ordeal at sea after launching themselves onto makeshift rafts built from ropes and blue plastic containers when the boat (cayuco) they were travelling in ran out of petrol 29 miles from El Hierro.
Calm seas, clear visibility, and what Maritime Rescue described as the “skill and professionalism” of rescuers were key to locating them after they drifted six nautical miles through open water.
The incident occurred on Sunday (16th November), when an aircraft from the Sasemar 103 service spotted a cayuco adrift roughly 29 miles south of El Hierro. Two rescue vessels were deployed, and by around 3:30pm teams had rescued 157 people from the drifting boat, along with two others who had entered the water on oil drums to look for help.
It was at this point that survivors informed rescuers that two more passengers had also attempted to reach help by sea at around 5:00am using similar improvised flotation devices. This triggered a second emergency operation involving a helicopter, the Sasemar aircraft, and alerts to a nearby merchant vessel.
“We established a search area based on the currents and wind conditions from five in the morning,” explained María Dolores Septién, head of the Maritime Rescue coordination centre in Tenerife. One of the rescue vessels, en route to La Restinga, eventually spotted “a small shape on the horizon” around three and a half kilometres away, finding the two missing youths alive.
Septién emphasised that although visibility was good, locating them still required significant skill: “When you’re searching at sea, it’s one thing to look, and another to actually find.”
Both rescued youths were described as “happy, cheerful, and in apparently good health,” and did not require helicopter evacuation.
She noted that while the priority was to bring the rescued occupants of the cayuco to port as quickly as possible, new information meant the search had to be relaunched immediately. “Not all rescues are the same,” she said, recalling other unusual cases, such as a young man rescued off Fuerteventura in 2024 while attempting to reach the islands using a lorry tyre, or the 2006 crisis case where a migrant jumped into the sea on wooden planks.
“From time to time we encounter these dramatic situations,” she added, emphasising the inherent complexity of all migrant rescues. Many travellers have no maritime experience, and the often precarious condition of the vessels makes rescue efforts even more challenging.
“If the boat itself is unsafe, drifting, and the passengers are already in terrible condition, and they’re not professionals of the sea, everything adds up against us.”
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