Greek Holidaymakers Rescue a Syrian Refugee Adrift for 13 Hours

Sandra Tsiligeridu comforts the rescued man on the boat back to Kos.

In late August 2015, a group of Greek friends returning by boat from the small island of Pserimos to Kos pulled a Syrian refugee out of rough water. The man, named in reports as Mohamed (also spelled Mohammed), had been drifting for about 13 hours in nothing but a life vest after diving from an overloaded raft to recover a lost oar. The Greek Coast Guard had already searched for him without success and feared he had drowned. Thanks to one woman, Sandra Tsiligeridu, who realised he was not a diver but a man in trouble, he was brought back alive to his family.

The rescue off Kos

Sandra and her friends were heading back from a day trip when someone spotted a figure in the sea. At first the group assumed it was a diver, waved, and steered to give him room. Sandra looked again and saw that he was struggling. She shouted to the friend at the wheel to turn around.

The sea was rough, around force 5 on the Beaufort scale, with a stiff wind and choppy waves. The friends hauled the man aboard. He was shivering and frightened, so Sandra wrapped him in towels and held him for the ride back while she phoned the port authority in Kos. The reply from the port brought relief: his family had already reported him missing.

Speaking to the Greek-American news site The Pappas Post, which first reported the story, Sandra said she felt "blessed" to have been able to help bring him back to his family.

How Mohamed ended up alone in the sea

According to the account given by the people on his raft, Mohamed had set out from the Turkish coast at about 5 a.m. with roughly 40 other Syrians, bound for Kos. Their inflatable craft had no engine, only two oars, and was badly suited to the conditions.

Large waves knocked one of the oars overboard. Fearing that the raft could not make it with a single oar, Mohamed jumped in to retrieve it. In the dark and the swell he lost sight of the boat, and the current carried him away. The people on board managed to throw him a life vest, and that vest is what kept him alive.

The raft reached Kos at around noon, about seven hours after leaving. His family immediately reported him missing, and the Greek Coast Guard launched a search that lasted more than five hours before it was called off. Around 6 p.m., roughly 13 hours after he went into the water, Sandra's boat found him.

Kos in the summer of 2015

This rescue happened at the height of the European refugee crisis. More than a million refugees and migrants crossed the Mediterranean to Europe in 2015, most of them by the short but risky route from Turkey to the Greek islands. Kos lies close to the Turkish coast near the resort of Bodrum, and smugglers were charging around 1,000 to 1,500 US dollars a person for a crossing in flimsy, overcrowded boats.

The distances look small on a map, but the Aegean can be dangerous, especially at night, in strong winds or in unseaworthy craft. Around 731 people died in the Aegean in 2015. Less than a week after this story was published, on 2 September 2015, the drowning of two-year-old Alan Kurdi off Bodrum made the human cost of these crossings impossible to ignore.

Islands like Kos and Lesbos, already busy with summer tourists, suddenly faced thousands of arrivals with little official support. UNHCR described conditions on some islands as chaotic, and reception facilities were overwhelmed.

Ordinary Greeks who stepped in

Sandra's quick decision was part of a much bigger story. Throughout 2015, fishermen, island residents, volunteer lifeguards and holidaymakers in Greece helped people out of the water, handed out food and dry clothes, and drove the exhausted to safety. Many did so while Greece itself was going through a severe economic crisis.

That effort was recognised internationally. In 2016 the volunteers of the Hellenic Rescue Team and Lesbos activist Efi Latsoudi received UNHCR's Nansen Refugee Award for their work helping refugees reaching Greece in 2015. The Hellenic Coast Guard, meanwhile, was stretched to its limits by the number of boats arriving.

What helped Mohamed survive 13 hours

Surviving that long in open water is rare, and a few factors were clearly on his side. The life vest kept his head above water without him having to swim, which saves vital energy. Late-summer water temperatures in the eastern Aegean are relatively warm, which slows the onset of hypothermia compared with colder seas. And the rescuers did not give up on a second glance: the most important moment of the day was Sandra looking twice.

The story also shows why safety advice for anyone at sea is so consistent. Wear a life jacket, stay with the boat if possible, and if you do end up in the water, float rather than fight the waves and try to stay visible.

Why this small story still matters

Numbers in a crisis can blur into abstraction. A story like this one brings it back to a single person, a single boat and a single choice. A man risked his life for an oar so that his family's raft could reach land. A group of friends on their way home from a day out changed course instead of sailing past. A frightened man was wrapped in towels and held until he was back with the people who had already begun to mourn him.

It is a reminder that compassion is often decided in seconds, by whoever happens to be close enough to help.

Sources: The Pappas Post: original report by Gregory Pappas, 28 August 2015; 2015 European migrant crisis (Wikipedia). Photo via The Pappas Post.

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