Heinz wants to give a ship to a castaway who survived on ketchup

The manufacturer of the popular ketchup Heinz has asked people for help to find a man from the Caribbean island of Dominica who claims to have been adrift on a sailboat for 24 days and kept alive on a can of that sauce, garlic powder and bouillon cubes.

The objective of this search operation started on February 14 is to give Elvis Francois, 47 years old, a boat, despite the fact that when he was rescued by the Colombian Navy last January, he said he had no knowledge of navigation.

Perhaps for this reason and the bad memory of his involuntary adventure does not appear anywhere, despite the fact that the company has contacted the authorities of Dominica and Colombia.

“We are looking for credible leads to contact Elvis to offer him a new ship equipped with navigation technology and thus avoid another disaster in the future”wrote the company in its message to the public on Instagram.

At the end of January, the Colombian Navy reported that it had found Francois aboard a small sailboat 120 nautical miles (about 222 kilometers) northwest of Puerto Bolívar, in the department of La Guajira (northeast), thanks to the fact that he had written on the helmet the word “Help”, help in English.

According to what Francois told the Colombian sailors, on December 25 he was on the island of Saint Maarten in the Netherlands Antilles on the seashore performing maintenance on a sailboat when the wind carried it out to sea.

Francois had no experience in navigation, so he was lost and disoriented at sea and his attempts to maneuver the boat and connect by radio were unsuccessful.

When he was rescued, he said he had been adrift for 24 days and that he survived on a bottle of ketchup, garlic powder and bouillon cubes.

He had no water, so he had to hydrate himself with what little he could collect from the condensation that formed on the boat’s sail and in a sack, according to Commander Carlos Urbano Montes.

The Colombian Navy offered him medical attention and he was sent to Colombian Migration to start the corresponding procedures for his return to his country of origin.

Source: EFE