Mexicans Doubt Fishermen's Tale

Three Mexican fishermen who claim they drifted for nine months across the Pacific Ocean in a 27ft boat returned home yesterday to a face a growing number of sceptics casting doubt over their incredible tale.

Originally hailed as heroes when the news broke last week, Salvador Ordóñez, Jesús Vidaña and Lucio Rendón faced a barrage of questions at Mexico City airport about their good health, the fate of two other crewmen, and whether they were ever out fishing at all.

Looking somewhat stunned, the three young men stuck firmly to their story, declaring themselves willing to face a lie-detector test. "To those who don't believe us I say, why don't they try it and see?" Mr Vidaña said.

Mr Vidaña and his two friends say they were contracted to go on a shark fishing trip from the Pacific coastal town of San Blas on October 28 by a man they knew only as Juan. Currents and winds pulled the boat out to sea, they say, after the fuel they carried for its two outboard motors ran out.

The three fishermen claim that while Juan and his assistant, nicknamed El Farcero, died three months into the ordeal, they continued to drift 5,500 miles until they were picked up near the Marshall Islands by a local tuna trawler.

That ship docked on the islands earlier this week from where the three were flown back to Mexico by the foreign ministry. Finally on home ground the three survivors dismissed speculation, due to the lack of any official record of the fishing trip, that they were actually out looking for packets of cocaine rather than sharks.

Drug traffickers moving Colombian drugs to the US market via Mexico are known to use fishermen in the area to recover drugs dropped from larger ships out at sea. Mexico's attorney general has said he does not have any evidence implicating the fishermen in drug trafficking but has not ruled out opening an investigation.

During the airport press conference Mr Ordóñez added that it would have been Juan's responsibility to register the trip. The three survivors claim that Juan and El Farcero died because they refused to eat the raw fish and sea birds that kept the others alive.

They say they prayed over the bodies before burying them at sea. "They were disgusted by us eating birds and fish raw, drinking the blood, eating the entrails," Mr Rendón said.

"Juan would say to me 'how can you eat that?' Well the consequences are clear now. I am alive."

The three men were also challenged to explain why, with such a limited diet, they were not thinner and suffering from ailments such as scurvy. "We look good because when we were rescued we were treated very well," Mr Ordóñez said, thanking the Taiwanese crew on the trawler that picked them up on August 9.

"They gave us lots of food and they kept us in a cabin with air conditioning."

And why was their skin not covered in lesions from the merciless sun? The fishermen said they rigged up some shade with a blanket.

For all the mystery and all the doubts, no alternative theory has yet emerged to explain how the three young Mexicans got to the other side of the ocean and into the little boat in which they were found.