'HELP' spelled out in palm leaves leads to island rescue in Pacific

It sounds like a tale straight out of Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Treasure Island” or a plotline in the “Pirates of the Caribbean.”

Three men were stranded on a remote Pacific islet for more than a week after the outboard motor on their 20-foot open skiff stopped working, as reported by the Washington Post.

The castaways spelled out the word “HELP” in large print with palm fronds on the beach, which allowed them to be rescued, the U.S. Coast Guard told the Post.

The three men, experienced mariners in their 40s, were on a fishing trip near Pikelot in the Federated States of Micronesia, a Pacific nation of islands between the Philippines and Hawaii.

The trio became trapped on an uninhabited island, where they survived on coconuts and water from a well, the Post said.

A "Help" sign out of palm leaves laid out on the beach helped lead to the rescue of three mariners stranded for more than a week on an atoll in Yap.https://t.co/MoRyCHr1Se

— Guam PDN (@GuamPDN) April 11, 2024

“The skiff was damaged when they approached the island due to the swells surging on the island and surrounding shoal,” Chief Warrant Officer Sara Muir of U.S. Coast Guard Forces Micronesia, Sector Guam, told the Stars and Stripes newspaper Thursday. The battery on their radio had died, she said.

A relative called rescue officials in Guam last weekend, the Coast Guard said.

The initial search area stretched over 78,000 square nautical miles, the Coast Guard said in a statement. A U.S. Navy aircraft dispatched from an air base in Japan spotted the “HELP” sign.

“This act of ingenuity was pivotal in guiding rescue efforts directly to their location,” Coast Guard Lt. Chelsea Garcia said in a press release.

The aircraft dropped “survival packages” for the men to sustain them until more assistance could arrive, and an air station in Hawaii then dropped a radio to contact the men, who said they “were in good health,” the Coast Guard said.

Muir said the trio had enough food to survive, “but not for much longer,” the Post said.