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A US Navy and Coast Guard rescued three castaway sailors stranded on a tiny Pacific Ocean island for more than a week after the trio spelt out “HELP” using palm fronds laid on a white-sand beach.

The three sailors had been stranded on Pikelot Atoll, part of Micronesia, since March 31 when their boat was caught by swells and its outboard motor was damaged.

With their radio running out of battery power, the men gathered palm fronds from the 12-hectare island, and arranged them to spell out “HELP” on the beach, and then waited.

For a week, the men lived off coconut meat, but they did have fresh water from a small well on the island, which is sometimes visited by fishermen in the region, according to Coast Guard officials.

The hunt for the men began on April 6, when one of their relatives contacted rescue officials in the US Pacific territory of Guam, reporting that they had not returned to Polowat Atoll, an island over 100 kilometres away from where the three began their journey on Easter Sunday.

Their rescue is even more amazing if you consider just how remote Piklelot is. The island is part of the Federated States of Micronesia, a Pacific republic between the Philippines and Hawaii comprised of over 600 islands spread across approximately 2.5 million square kilometres of ocean.

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