Man Goes Missing In The Atlantic, Two Months Later Returns With Mysterious Controversies

This story is perhaps a real-life version of the movie Cast Away, where a young man called Louis Jordan drifted away in the Atlantic only to be rescued days later by a German container ship. Son of a retired school teacher and an experienced sailor called Frank, Jordan wanted to set sail and embark on a brief fishing trip aboard his 35-ft boat Angel. But things quickly took a harsh turn, leaving an ambitious Jordan alone in the middle of nowhere.

Weighing in at 230 pounds, unlike his father, Jordan was an inexperienced sailor. Naturally, setting sail and embarking on that journey on the 23^rd of January 2015 from a marina in Conway, South Carolina was probably a bad idea. Nevertheless, as ambitious as he was, Jordan spent months working on his boat, preparing it for the big winter fishing trip out in the Atlantic. However, the marina’s manager, Jeff Weeks, believed that Jordan wasn’t ready to go out into the ocean.

Despite odds being against him, Jordan set sail and off he went on his big adventure into the Atlantic. For the first few days Frank heard nothing from his son, and that didn’t bother him much. But by January 29^th he decided to get in touch with the Coast Guard and requested them to locate his son’s whereabouts. The search began on the 8^th of February with an anxious Frank posting updates on Facebook, praying for his son’s health wellbeing. Then a week later, the search was called off setting fear in Frank’s heart.

In March 2015, a German container ship called Houston Express spotted Jordan about 500 miles from the marina in Conway. How he landed there and the condition he was found in is surrounded by a lot of controversies. While earlier reports mention he was sitting on the hull of his upside-down boat, other reports say that Jordan’s boat wasn’t overturned when he was first spotted by the cargo ship, 66 days after going missing.

A Coast Guard helicopter flew to Jordan’s location and lifted him on board. Earlier reports claimed that Jordan’s boat had overturned, lost its mast and that he survived his 66-day ordeal by drinking rainwater and eating raw fish that he trapped by trailing his clothes. Not many people bought this dramatic survival story and soon began questioning its authenticity. As it turns out, the initial reports were wrong because there was a misunderstanding between the cargo crew and the rescuing Coast Guard. Cargo ship captain Thomas Grenz claimed that his ship hadn’t overturned, but the mast was missing.

Apart from the way he was found, there were also controversies surrounding his appearance with people claiming that he looked healthy for a person with little supplies stuck in the middle of nowhere. People also wondered how Jordan’s skin wasn’t damaged by the sun and salty waters of the Atlantic. Jordan claimed that he’d broken his shoulder, but there was no evidence to support this injury and during his rescue, he wasn’t guarding his broken shoulder.

Survival expert Erik Kulik also doubted Jordan’s survival story claiming that for a person who spent over two months at the sea, Jordan’s feet weren’t wobbly during his rescue. But author and naval architect Rick Spilman along with a Coast Guard spokesman begged to differ, stating that Jordan’s survival story may be true and they weren’t willing to accept nor reject what may have happened to Jordan on his mysterious fishing trip.

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