This is the story of Mano, Peter Warner, and the Tonga Castaways who were stranded on Ata Island for 15 months
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So this kid is about to get stranded on a desert island with no way home. Now his name's Mano and he's around 16 years old and he goes to a strict Catholic boarding school on an island in Tonga called Tongatapu. And this boarding school just sucks. And one day, he and five of his friends, they decide they're just gonna leave. I mean, they're all bored as hell.
Their boarding school sucks, the cafeteria food is terrible, and they're just dying to get out and go on an adventure. So they get an idea. They wanna check out Fiji, which is about 500 miles away from Tonga Tapu, and there's no way they could possibly make it there. but they're gonna give it a shot.
So they gather up some basic supplies and they go out and they steal a boat from a local fisherman. Now this local fisherman they steal from, the boys, they think he's kind of an asshole, but we'll get back to him. So anyway, Mano and his five friends, they push out to sea on this stolen boat and they coast away and they're having a good time and come nighttime, they're all asleep.
Hours later, in the middle of the night, kaboom, a huge storm hits.
it wakes them all up so they get up and they raise the sail but the wind is so strong that bam the sail is whipped apart and then pow the ship's rudder breaks and then hours later the storm finally passes and they're all alive but they're completely lost and the worst part they don't have any food i mean they're able to collect a little rain water to drink but otherwise they got nothing
So these six boys, they just drift out at sea with basically nothing to live on for seven days. But then on the eighth day, something crazy happens. They spot a little bitty island off in the distance. And it's not much, but it's something. I mean, maybe there are people on it who can help.
And luckily for the boys, the current of the ocean eventually pushes their boat close enough that they can jump in the water and swim the rest of the way. So they all end up swimming to the shore. And that is when they discover they just landed on an island that is completely uninhabited. Their boat had drifted from the Tongatapu area about a hundred miles over to the island of Ata.
And now Ata is about a half mile big and it doesn't really have much on it. But at this point, Mano and the boys, they're all starving and they're dehydrated. And so they'll make do. And so they catch some seabirds and they drink their blood. And they eat some seabird eggs and they try to start a fire, but they can't start a fire.
I mean, they don't have the tools and the wood on the island isn't really dry. So they keep up this life for a while, eating whatever they can find, doing whatever they can to survive. Now, luckily there's enough rainfall on the island to keep them hydrated. But then, about a month in, they get an idea.
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