[imagesource: Facebook / EmoNews]

This survival tale is one for Heinz’s books.

The US ketchup manufacturer felt indebted to a man who ate its signature tomato sauce to survive being lost at sea for nearly a month, and are thus making arrangements to provide him with a new boat.

The survival saga began in December when currents in the Caribbean swept sailor Elvis François’ sailboat away while he made repairs to it off the island of Sint Maarten in the Netherlands Antilles, where he lives.

Elvis apparently tried to use his phone to tell his friends where he was so they could rescue him, but alas, there was not sufficient signal and he ended up spending a total of 24 days adrift in the middle of the Caribbean Sea.

From then on, he said “there was nothing else to do but sit and wait” as he subsisted off the life-saving bottle of Heinz ketchup, as well as garlic powder, cubes of soup and rainwater which he collected with a cloth.

He also scrawled the word “help” in English on the boat’s hull and unsuccessfully tried to start a fire as a distress signal.

His resourcefulness finally got him saved though when he managed to flag down a passing plane with a mirror.

The pilot noticed him about 120 nautical miles northwest of Colombia’s Guajira peninsula, and then a container ship’s crew brought him to the port of Cartagena.

The Colombian navy announced the remarkable rescue on January 18, giving Elvis a clean bill of health (besides some weight loss) after the gruelling ordeal:

“At some point I lost hope and thought about my family,” François said in a video released by the Colombian navy. “I thank the [rescuers] – if it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t be telling the story.”

Unfortunately, the sailor had to abandon his sailboat at sea after the container ship picked him up.

But Heinz, in recognising that Elvis had survived with the help of three daily doses of its ketchup, sought to track him down and give him a new boat, launching the #FindtheKetchupBoatGuy campaign on Instagram:

 

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A post shared by Heinz (@heinz)

Having finally found the saved sailor, Heinz is rewarding him with a new boat:

“We received thousands of likes, shares and messages of kindness in our search to find Elvis François,” a statement on Heinz’s Instagram page said on Monday. “It was an incredible group effort across six continents that led to the hundreds of articles and leads and our eventual contact with Elvis.”

The campaign reached nearly five million users and gathered more than 4 000 likes, which the company said was a record for them in its statement to the Guardian.

They better stick to their word and give Elvis his sailboat in gratitude for making its tomato sauce so enthralling.

[source:guardian]