Surviving lockdown in the middle of the Pacific

In Pandemic Odyssey by RT Documentary, a team of seven sailors attempt a trip around the world in a steel yacht and get stranded in the Pacific Ocean during the COVID lockdown. The trip started in 2019 from the city of Krasnoyarsk, where the yacht was built and was cut short by the first wave of the pandemic. The team had to fly home from Chile, where the lockdown caught them, and they were only able to resume their voyage eight months later. RT Documentaries Natalya Kadyrova joined the team with several new members.

The sailors thought that trudging through the arctic ice was the biggest challenge on their way, but they were gravely mistaken. Just when they set out to cross the Pacific, the pandemic hit again, and all the countries on the way closed their borders. The team was desperate as the port authorities in Samoa didn't even respond to their emergency call as is the requirement. They had to fight storms and stretch their scarce food and water supplies as they had no idea where they would renew them.

In a place full of water, not much can be done when that place is the ocean. Washing in the salty water was almost impossible because soap didn't work. Saltwater is unfit for drinking, and the little collected from the rain would quickly evaporate in the sun. Catching food in the middle of the ocean was also an ordeal as fish are easily caught closer to shore.

The team had to survive on food rations hoping that Fiji, the only country with borders open, would have mercy and let them in. But they had to fight a storm, get into fights, and lose a friend before they got there. So how did they manage to survive all this?