Nine people spent six days adrift off Honduras and were recently rescued. They were apparently in an open 27' boat. Rainwater and an unfortunate gull kept them going. Apparently they're in decent shape.

http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/07/03/...st-of-honduras/

They didn't check their fuel before they set out, and they ran out. Noone knew where to look for them. They couldn't signal the cargo ships they saw.

I like to give people the benefit of the doubt, but such a series of miscues strikes me as the classic groupthink scenario -- "surely someone else checked the details."

Man, they sure did a lot wrong! Pretty lucky to come out of it so well.

All that work and no Darwin Award!

There is a lot of news material on the Web on this. They were spotted by a US Coast Guard HC-130 search plane flying out of US Coast Guard Air Station Clearwater, Florida, and picked up by an American UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter 20 minutes later.

Coast Guard Air Station Clearwater is the USCG's largest air station, and operates six HC-130Hs. The aircraft is an ideal platform for long range Search and Rescue, with over 14 hours of airborne endurance and large scanner windows built into the airframe side. (Wikipedia)

Also, the HC-130H has a nice chin turrent camera with color and near-infrared capability, judging by the video.

"The group tried to flag down several passing ships to no avail." While a PLB would have been best, even a signal mirror could have been a great help, here.

The US Coast Guard posted video from the search plane here - seems to be near-infrared and color, and it looks like the video annotation gives you the latitude, longitude, bearing and time - I wonder if the airspeed and altitude are on there? It also includes footage of the helicopter hovering near the boat, which I haven't seen in any of the news videos.

View raw USCG footage here - can be downloaded in higher resolution.

• Video interview of HC-130 search plane crew
• Nine Missing Boaters Rescued off Honduras
• USCG Video of search plane return to base, searcher interview
• US Coast Guard Press Release

Here's one of (many) YouTube clips, but the raw USCG footage link above is much better.