36 days at sea: How these castaways survived hallucinations, thirst and desperation

A month had passed when the first four men decided to jump.

Countless cargo ships had navigated past them, yet no one had come to their rescue. Their fuel was finished. The hunger and thirst were overwhelming. Dozens had already died, including the captain.

The voyage from the struggling Senegalese fishing town of Fass Boye to Spain’s Canary Islands, a gateway to the European Union where they hoped to find work, was supposed to take a week. But more than a month later, the wooden boat carrying 101 men and boys was getting blown further and further away from its intended destination.

No land was in sight. Yet the four men believed — or hallucinated — that they could swim to shore. To stay on the “cursed” boat, they thought, was a death sentence. They picked up empty water containers and wooden planks — anything to help them float.

And then, one by one, they leapt.

In the days that followed, dozens more would do the same before disappearing into the ocean. There were those who chose to stay in the boat and those who had no choice, no strength left to move. They withered under a deafening wind and a relentless sun.

The migrants still in the boat watched as their brothers faded. Those who died onboard were tossed into the ocean until the survivors had no energy left and bodies began accumulating.

At last, on day 36, a Spanish fishing vessel spotted them. It was Aug. 14 and they were 290 kilometers (180 miles) northeast of Cape Verde, the last cluster of islands in the eastern central Atlantic Ocean before the vast nothingness that separates West Africa from the Caribbean.

For 38 men and boys, it was salvation. For the other 63, it was too late.

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Too often migrants disappear without a trace, without witnesses, without memory.

As the number of people leaving Senegal for this year surged to record levels, the Associated Press spoke to dozens of survivors, rescuers, aid workers and officials to understand what the men endured at sea, and why, despite their traumatic