Sascha Wil­son

Adrift at the sea for four days with­out food and wa­ter, three friends say they sur­vived on faith and sheer willpow­er to re­turn home to their loved ones.

Us­ing the sea knowl­edge and sur­vival skills, Shaquille Charles, Wal­ter White­man, and An­tho­ny Sandy rode the tide un­til they made it to shore at Morne Di­a­blo yes­ter­day morn­ing.

“It was hard and giv­ing up was out of the key al­though we weak and every­thing. We could not give in,” said Sandy.

Af­ter leav­ing on a pirogue from the Guayagua­yare port last Fri­day, the boat’s pro­peller mal­func­tioned on Sat­ur­day.

They tried ty­ing it up but that on­ly worked for eight miles, but they were still 15 miles away from land.

Re­call­ing their har­row­ing ex­pe­ri­ence at the Ma­yaro Health Fa­cil­i­ty yes­ter­day, White­man said, “It was very tor­tur­ous but I am glad to be home.”

They built a sail and used their an­chor to guide them back to land.

“When the tide go­ing back out we throw out the an­chor so the tide would not car­ry we back out to Venezuela and when tide change back to Trinidad we take back up we an­chor again. We did that for two, three days.”

Even­tu­al­ly, he said the tide brought them home. Charles said on Sun­day they saw the search and res­cue plane and they waved, but the plane flew past them.

“That whole ex­pe­ri­ence was not nice. We sur­vived by just faith, no wa­ter, no food.” But, he said they nev­er gave up.

“Every day we kept say­ing we have to go home and hold­ing the faith.”

Sandy said the cur­rent took them to Venezue­lan wa­ters.

“But, again cur­rent, sail and tac­tics, every­body put in their coins to make it hap­pen. We have to sur­vive,” he added.

Thank­ful to their fam­i­ly, friends, com­mu­ni­ty, and the search and res­cue teams who were out look­ing for them, Sandy said, “In any way they as­sist, small, big, it counts so we thank­ful for that.”

He said he was ea­ger to get home to take a bath and eat.

White­man’s broth­er Ker­ry was re­lieved that they were back home, but he was dis­ap­point­ed by the lack of re­sponse from the law en­force­ment of­fi­cers. “Hon­est­ly, we didn’t get no as­sis­tance from the au­thor­i­ties, Coast Guard nei­ther the po­lice ser­vice. Every­body was just nat­u­ral­ly putting up their mon­ey. We even hire a pri­vate he­li­copter to fly around.”

He said the sys­tem failed the men. Thank­ing God for bring­ing them home Charles’ sis­ter Ker­dash­er Charles said they had a lot of sleep­less nights but they nev­er gave up hope.

“Every­one was just pray­ing that they will come home.”

The men were treat­ed for de­hy­dra­tion at the health fa­cil­i­ty and then re­leased.