The news stories concerning that mummified sailor just keep coming. First he made headlines just for being discovered, and rightly so; the discovery of a desiccated cadaver slumped over the radio controls of a derelict vehicle is bound to attract some notice. Then we received word that the man’s cause of death had been determined: 59-year-old Manfred Fritz Bajorat died of a heart attack. Nothing exotic, no pirates or anything like that. The major curiosity at that time was the preservation of the body, and the rapidity with which the natural mummification of the same had occurred. (About a week, the doctors said, form a full-grown man to transform into a block of charcoal, sans the aid of fire or heat.) This week brings us news that those Filipino fishermen weren’t the first people to discoverer Bajorat’s yacht and remains.
A team of sailors onboard a racing yacht, the LMAX EXCHANGE, apparently got there first. They spotted the boat adrift and stopped to send someone aboard; the man recorded his initial exploration of the vessel; the video is available at the linked-to article below. Don’t you know the guy was rather surprised to come across Bajorat? The racers radioed in to report the discovery, then were given clearance by the Coast Guard to carry on. They had racin’ to do, after all, and there wasn’t anything they could do for Bajorat at that point. Hey, no judgments. I wouldn’t have wanted to sit with the body waiting for the authorities to arrive, either.
