Real-Life Survivor Recounts His Ordeal on Island Off Baja

The boat was delivering him far from the hell he had known for most of the past two weeks, but it was during the long ride back to civilization that Joseph Rangel experienced his greatest anxiety.

“On that boat ride home, it was my worst nightmare,” Rangel said Wednesday, a day after his rescue from a deserted island in Mexico’s Sea of Cortez. “I didn’t want to sleep or even nap because I didn’t want to wake up and be in a cave again--and have it all be just a dream.”

The fisherman’s rescue from the rocky shores of Isla Angel de la Guarda was no dream and some say it’s a miracle that he and his Mexican skiff captain, Jose Luis Ramos Garcia, were able to survive for so long against the elements on an island that offered only small, dank caves for protection and crabs, sea snails and sea cucumbers as sustenance.

A third person on the ill-fated fishing voyage, which began Sept. 30 in the northern Baja California coastal town of San Felipe, wasn’t so fortunate. Rangel’s longtime friend and fishing companion, Lorenzo Madrid, 50, of Malibu, weakened significantly during the ordeal and perished Sunday afternoon, less than two days before the rescue.

“We watched the life just go out of his body,” Rangel said while being treated for mostly cuts and abrasions at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in San Diego.

Madrid’s body has been recovered and identified by distraught family members who acknowledged only partial relief as a trying time that seemed to last an eternity is finally over. The exact cause of Madrid’s death was not immediately known.

*

Both Rangel, 50, a product inspector for an Anaheim electronics company, and Madrid, a drug store manager, expected a great adventure while setting out from San Felipe Sept. 30 aboard the 87-foot Celia Angelina, bound for the bountiful “Midriff” region of the Sea of Cortez, 125 miles to the south.

The Midriff, where northbound and southbound currents meet, stirring up nutrients that attract an array of game fish and other marine creatures, is prolific but dangerously remote.

What Rangel and Madrid did not envision was being forced ashore by a fierce westerly wind that caught their captain by surprise as they fished the western face of Isla Angel de la Guarda, at 42 miles long the largest of many uninhabited islands dotting an otherwise vast and largely deserted sea.

The 22-foot skiff was out of sight of five others brought down by the mother ship, and well beyond sight of the mother ship, anchored in a protected bay at the northern end of the island.

During the next several days, after their skiff had been battered on the rocks, the three were forced into a fight for their lives, trying to negotiate the sheer and rocky western shore of the island, inching their way north to where they were more likely to be discovered.

“I didn’t want to go to survival school all over again,” said Rangel, who was part of a helicopter squadron during the Vietnam War. His remark was pointed at the boat’s owner, Bob Castellon, criticizing him for not outfitting his skiff captains with radios or flashlights.

Castellon, who has offices in San Felipe and Hacienda Heights, did not return phone calls this week as an investigation by authorities in San Felipe remains incomplete, according to Baja California state prosecutor Marco Antonio Montoya.

Garcia, 25, who runs a taco stand in San Felipe, was questioned Wednesday about his experience as a guide and told Montoya that he had acted as one on at least 10 previous trips.

Garcia was listed in good health. Rangel credited Garcia for his tireless efforts during the ordeal.

Those efforts began, of course, with the westerly wind that slammed them against the shore of the island on the afternoon of Oct. 4. As darkness fell, they realized their only course of action was to beach the skiff and spend the night on the island.

They were able to unload four 15-ounce bottles of water, three cans of beer and one soft drink. They built a small shelter, lit a fire with their lone cigarette lighter and hunkered down, hopeful for a morning run to the mother ship.

Come morning, however, the boat’s small outboard wouldn’t start. Through the morning there was no sign of help, and Rangel said Garcia told him help would not be arriving, indicating that they were not supposed to be fishing on the island’s western shore.

Rangel said Garcia decided to try to swim the 30-plus miles to the Baja coast, an improbable task if not an impossible one. “He came back six hours later,” Rangel said. “He said he had a sea lion rub against his leg and then he saw a shark, so he came back.”

That afternoon, Garcia made a pair of oars out of driftwood and the three rowed “for all we were worth,” but the wind blew them back again. That night they “crashed against the rocks” and jumped out of the boat, getting “all scraped up in the process.”

The boat was useless now and the three were castaways anew, this time with no source of fire, their lighter lost during the landing.

They spent the next several days walking and wading, at a snail’s pace, over rocks and around jutting points. Rangel’s poor swimming ability was holding them back, so Garcia built a small raft the three used to get around the impassable parts of the island, which were many.

Asked why a search effort that involved more than a dozen vessels as well as government and volunteer aircraft failed to locate them, Rangel could only surmise that the effort focused on the eastern shore and beyond, along the coast of mainland Mexico, where it was presumed they had drifted in the skiff.

He also said the three were forced into inland areas, often in the shadow of cliffs, and probably were not always easy to spot.

Making things worse, Garcia, like many Mexican fishing guides, was not wearing shoes, so Rangel eventually loaned the guide his, as Garcia was leading the way on the raft, pulling the two fishermen as he waded through the rocky tide pools.

“I did find a size-11 shoe and, like, a size-12 thong on the island, but I wasn’t comfortable in those so I went shoeless after a while,” Rangel said.

Garcia was the main provider, locating a cave each night and gathering food and finding bottles washed ashore with remnants of drink in them.

“We made slow progress and being in the water during the day kept us cool,” Rangel said, guessing the water temperature to be near 70 and daytime air in the mid-80s. “We got along. We caught some live crabs and some sea snails and sea cucumbers . . . I’ve had better.”

That Rangel was able to joke was a sign that his health was improving. But his spirits plummeted at the mention of Madrid, a close friend who had been enjoying “the best fishing trip of his life” during the days before becoming lost.

*

Madrid, considerably overweight but with no known health problems, began to weaken three days into the ordeal, Rangel said.

The long, soggy days went by and the last moments for Madrid came after more trudging over tide pools and clinging to the raft.

“For some reason, that day he said he wanted to be in the back of the raft so we let him, and when I turned around his face was in the water,” Rangel said. “He was breathing water.”

Rangel and Garcia helped Madrid out of the water, where he collapsed.

“I knew what was happening,” Rangel said, struggling with his emotions. “About 15 minutes later I looked at the palm of his hands and they were blue. So were his feet and eyes . . . were all glazed.”

Less than two days later, Rangel and Garcia were discovered by sea cucumber fishermen working from a skiff. The Celia Angelina, which had returned to the area to be part of the search, was not far away.

Madrid’s body was retrieved and the boat eventually began the trip home, ultimately delivering Rangel to a loving family that had all but given him up for dead.

Asked if he’ll ever make another fishing trip out of San Felipe, he paused and said, “Probably not . . . but don’t hold me to that.”

*

Times Mexico City Bureau researcher Jose Diaz Briseno contributed to this story.