A mother of two shipwrecked sailors drank her own urine so she could nurse her children and keep them alive for four days after their boat was wrecked by a giant wave.
A mother of two castaways drank her own urine so she could breastfeed her children until they were rescued
Mariely Chacon, 40, sacrificed her own life to save her six-year-old son and two-year-old daughter after they were trapped at sea.
The sailing trip turned into a disaster after a huge wave smashed the hull of the boat and left a chunk of the wreckage and a cooler floating in the sea with the mother, her nanny and the two children on board.
Rescue teams are still searching for five other people missing at sea after the boat trip from Venezuela to the Caribbean ended in disaster for the group of family and friends.
Mariely, weakened, struggled to avoid dehydration so the children would have a chance to survive the ordeal.
But rescuers found the two children alive, but severely sunburned and dehydrated, still clinging to their dead mother.
They also found the children’s nanny, Veronica Martinez, 25, who had apparently taken refuge in a cooler on the ship to survive four days at sea in scorching temperatures.
According to authorities, the mother is believed to have perished from dehydration hours before rescuers found the survivors.
The group of nine had left Higuerote, in their native Venezuela, bound for the uninhabited Caribbean island of La Tortuga, off the country’s northern coast, on September 3, but never reached it.
Their disappearance triggered a rescue operation that found three of the survivors in a makeshift lifeboat and transported them to hospital.
Five people, including Remis David Camblor – Mariely’s husband and the children’s father – are still missing. The children and the nanny were taken to the hospital to be treated for dehydration and first-degree burns.
Authorities have confirmed that Mariely, who died from organ failure caused by dehydration, kept her children alive by drinking her own urine in order to nurse them.
