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Shipwreck survivor: 'I just hung on for dear life'
PORTSMOUTH, Virginia (CNN) -- A man who survived a shipwreck in the Atlantic Ocean, clinging to a piece of wood for 20 hours without a life jacket until his rescue, said Thursday he never gave up hope, even as waves and strong winds battered him. "I just hung on for dear life on top of the piece of wood that I was on, and just tried to relax and stay calm as much as possible," Robert Lambe said. Lambe, 35, of Bermuda, said he was a "little tired" toward the end of the ordeal, "but not that bad." The U.S. Coast Guard found Lambe. The main thing he thought about was, "hang on to that piece of wood. I kind of left my imprint in the piece of wood, actually." Lambe and two others had been on a 40-foot boat that rolled over in high seas Tuesday. The two others were never found. As he clung to the wood, winds whipped at about 40 mph, with gusts of over 50 mph. Lambe said he got rolled over about 18 to 20 times during the night. After Lambe had spent 20 hours in the sea, a crew in a Coast Guard search aircraft spotted him and lowered a life raft. "I couldn't believe it," Lambe said. "At that time, I just laid back, took a deep breath and said, 'OK, I think everything is going to be all right now.'" He survived with just minor cuts on his hands and feet. "I'm doing very well," he said. Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Mike Callahan said it was remarkable that Lambe survived. He said survivability charts estimate that someone can survive such conditions for 11 hours -- "he beat that by almost twice." "It was a lucky day for him," Callahan said. After dropping the life raft, the Coast Guard requested that the U.S. Navy hospital ship USNS Comfort, about 45 miles away, divert its course to pick up the survivor. The Comfort had deployed two days earlier from the United States en route to the Indian Ocean for a possible war with Iraq. The hospital ship arrived at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday and plucked Lambe from the water.
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