A man reported missing at sea two months ago has been rescued on the overturned hull of his yacht off the North Carolina coast.
The crew of a German-flagged container ship found 37-year-old Louis Jordan on his single-masted, 10-metre boat on Thursday afternoon.
He had a shoulder injury and was dehydrated but arrived at a hospital in good condition and refused treatment, family members and authorities said.
"Every day I was like, 'Please God, send me some rain, send me some water,"' Jordan told WAVY-TV.
Jordan said he initially did not believe the container ship was real when he saw it. He said the ship's crew did not see him until he began waving his arms.
"I waved my hands real slowly, and that's the signal 'I'm in distress. Help me,"' he told WAVY. "I blew my whistles. I had three whistles. They never heard them. I turned my American flag upside down and put that up. That says, 'Rescue me."'
Jordan had been living on his 1950s-era boat at a marina in South Carolina until January, when he told his family he was going into open water to sail and do some fishing, said his mother, Norma Davis. He set out January 23, Coast Guard officials said, and hadn't been heard from since.
The details of Jordan's whereabouts over the 66 days he was missing and how he might have survived were still unclear, said Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer Ryan Doss.
"We don't know where he capsized," Doss said. "We really won't know what happened to him out there until we talk to him" at length, he added, but said Jordan did manage to eat fish he caught while at sea.
Jordan told WAVY that he was travelling north when his boat hit bad weather. He said he saw a wave crash into his window, and the boat eventually filled with water. He said at one point he was flying through the air and he thinks he broke his shoulder.
A search for Jordan began in February but the Coast Guard reportedly abandoned it after 10 days.
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