RUSSIAN MAN FOUND ALIVE AFTER TWO MONTHS ON A DINGHY

A Russian man was found alive after drifting for two months on an inflatable boat. The bodies of the man’s brother and 15-year-old nephew were also on the boat. The three were sailing 150 kilometers to the Island of Sakhalin from the far eastern Khabarovsk region (* Ah, yes – I know it well!) on August 9 when their engine failed. Family members alerted authorities, who mounted a search using helicopters and a plane for a few days but failed to find them. But on Monday, October 14 around 10:00 pm, the dinghy was discovered as it passed a fishing boat in the Sea of Okhotsk, around 1,000 kilometres (670 miles) from its starting point. A video shows the bearded survivor, Mikhail Pichugin, in a life jacket shouting at the fishermen: “I don’t have much strength” but managing to catch a rope. The men had taken enough food to last two weeks and about five gallons of water, as well as warm clothes, life jackets and flares. Mr. Pichugin weighed only about 110 pounds when he was found, having lost half of his body weight. He didn’t immediately say how he’d managed to survive in the Sea of Okhotsk, the coldest sea in East Asia and known for its gales, or how his brother and nephew had died. Russia, being Russia, has opened an investigation against him for violating water safety rules.
* Was he running on the pool deck? Doing backflips off the diving board? Was he cannonballing?
* On the bright side, his brother and nephew were found intact.
* Food, water, warm clothes, life jackets and flares. So they were pretty well prepared, except for the part where they should have checked the engine.
* As a reward for having survived the ordeal, Russia will honor him with a military position in the Ukranian war front.
* At least he had eight weeks of not having to listen to American election news.