This Teen Was Lost at Sea for Nearly Two Months and Survived by Reading the Bible

It was seven in the morning when the sudden jolt ripped through the wooden fishing hut and snapped Aldi Novel Adilang fully awake. The structure had rocked violently before during bad weather, but this time felt different. The wind screamed across the open water, waves slammed into the hut’s stilts, and within seconds Aldi sensed that something was terribly wrong. When he stepped outside and looked at the sea around him, his fear was confirmed. The hut had shifted from its usual position. The rope anchoring it to the seabed was gone. In a matter of moments, the teenager realized he was no longer fixed in place but drifting freely into the vast Pacific Ocean, completely alone.

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Aldi grabbed his walkie talkie and radioed his friends working on nearby fishing huts. “Phone the boss,” he said over the crackling signal. “My anchor has snapped.” Having worked on the floating fishing huts known locally as rompong for two years, he tried to stay calm. This had happened before, and each time help had come. But as the hours passed, the weather worsened, the sea grew rougher, and the distance between him and the Indonesian shoreline increased. Without knowing it, Aldi had begun a 49 day journey across thousands of miles of ocean, an ordeal that would push him to the edge of survival and force him to rely on faith when everything else began to fail.

A Job That Placed Teenagers in Extreme Isolation

Aldi was from the Indonesian island of Sulawesi and had taken the rompong job when he was just 16 years old. The work required young workers to live alone on small wooden huts anchored far offshore, sometimes as much as 75 miles from land. Their responsibility was to light lamps each night to attract fish to traps below the surface, often spending months at sea with only limited supplies and sporadic contact with others. There was no phone signal and no internet, only walkie talkies that worked if nearby huts were close enough.

At the time, Aldi believed the job offered a decent income. He earned around 2 million rupiah a month, which felt worthwhile to a teenager seeking independence. However, the dangers of the work became painfully clear once his anchor snapped. There was no compass, no GPS, and no emergency safety equipment on the hut. Once untethered, the structure was completely at the mercy of ocean currents and wind.

Initially, Aldi believed help would arrive quickly. “On the first day I was OK, I wasn’t stressed or panicking. I knew they would send a boat but I was worried it would have to turn back because the winds and the waves were strong,” he later told reporters. As days passed with no rescue, fear began to replace confidence, and the scale of his isolation became impossible to ignore.

Supplies Running Out as the Ocean Drifted On

When the anchor broke, Aldi still had supplies meant to last about a month. He had rice, spices, coconut oil, cooking gas, and a drum of fresh water. Determined to stay focused, he created a daily routine. He fished beneath the hut, scanned the horizon for passing ships, and carefully marked each passing day on a hand drawn calendar in his notebook to prevent himself from losing track of time.

As the weeks dragged on, his supplies dwindled one by one. The cooking gas ran out first, forcing him to improvise by burning pieces of the wooden hut to cook the tuna he caught. When there was no more wood he could safely burn, he had no choice but to eat the fish raw, despite the toll it took on his already weakened body.

Water soon became the greatest threat. When his fresh water ran dry, Aldi resorted to soaking his shirt in seawater and drinking through the fabric in the hope that it would reduce the salt content. He survived like this for four agonizing days. Eventually, rain fell, refilling his containers just enough to keep him alive.

The Psychological Battle of Total Isolation

While hunger and thirst pushed his body to its limits, the mental strain of being alone was even more devastating. Aldi had no idea where he was or how far he had drifted. Without navigational tools, he could only imagine that each day carried him farther away from home. “The hardest thing was the thought that I would never see my parents again,” he said. “That I would never see my island again, and never make it home alive.”

Several ships passed him during the ordeal. One Indonesian vessel responded over the radio and promised to return after finishing its work. The ship never came back. Aldi recounted the memory without anger, but the sense of abandonment weighed heavily on him as days continued to pass without help.

“There were times when I crying and thinking about killing myself,” he admitted. The silence of the open ocean, the endless horizon, and the growing belief that no one was coming pushed him into deep despair. In those moments, survival became as much about mental endurance as physical strength.

Finding Strength Through the Bible and Prayer

When hope seemed nearly gone, Aldi turned to the Bible he had brought with him. Reading became his only source of comfort during the darkest moments of the ordeal. “When I was crying the only consolation I had was reading the Bible,” he said.

He slowly read through Matthew, John, Isaiah, Genesis, and Psalms, often revisiting the same passages over and over. One verse stayed firmly in his mind throughout the ordeal. Matthew chapter 6 verse 9, the opening of the Lord’s Prayer, became a source of reassurance as he prayed daily for survival and strength.

Alongside reading, Aldi sang Christian gospel songs out loud, filling the empty air around him with sound when silence felt unbearable. His faith did not calm the sea or bring immediate rescue, but it gave him something to hold onto when despair threatened to overwhelm him completely.

Rescue After 49 Days Adrift

On the forty ninth day, Aldi spotted a ship on the horizon. Summoning what little energy he had left, he waved a towel frantically and shouted the only English words he knew. “Help, help.” The ship initially passed him by, and for a brief moment it seemed as though hope had vanished once again.

Then the vessel turned around. A Panamanian flagged cargo ship approached the small hut and rescued the exhausted teenager. Video footage later showed Aldi being pulled aboard, wrapped in a blanket, and given water as crew members rushed to help him recover.

The ship was heading to Japan, where arrangements were made for Indonesian embassy officials to meet him. Nearly two months after his ordeal began, Aldi finally began the journey home. On a train in Japan, he made his first video call to his parents. “We were crying so much the officials from the embassy cut the call short,” he said later with a laugh. “They said you cannot be noisy like that on a train in Japan.”

A Promise to Never Return to Sea

Now back home with his family in North Sulawesi, Aldi says he will never return to life at sea. Although he had been stranded before for shorter periods, nothing compared to spending 49 days drifting alone across the ocean.

The experience permanently changed his outlook on life and work. What once seemed like a worthwhile job now feels unthinkable, given the physical and emotional toll it took on him.

At just 18 years old, Aldi Novel Adilang survived one of the most extreme survival ordeals imaginable by refusing to give up. With no navigation tools, no certainty of rescue, and nothing but faith to sustain him, he endured long enough for help to arrive. His story stands as a powerful reminder of human resilience and the strength people can find when everything else is stripped away.

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Michelle

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