Family Rescued in South Pacific After Sailing 'Where God Led Us' Scott Neuman - NPR.org
go to original August 14, 2013

Hannah Gastonguay, followed by her husband, Sean, disembark in the port city of San Antonio, Chile on Friday, Aug. 9, 2013. (Associated Press)

A leap of faith that sent an Arizona family bound for the South Pacific in a sailboat has returned them in an airplane after a harrowing ordeal at sea that saw them adrift and nearly out of food in one of the remotest stretches of ocean on the planet.

Hannah Gastonguay, 26, and her husband, Sean, 30, were fed up with abortion, homosexuality, taxes and the "state-controlled church" and so "decided to take a leap of faith and see where God led us," she told the AP. With them were Sean's father and the couple's two daughters, one 3 years old and the other an infant.

A few weeks into their ultimately 91 days at sea, the Gastonguays encountered "squall after squall after squall" that damaged their boat. Originally on a heading for the archipelago nation of Kiribati near the international dateline, they changed course to the Marquesas Islands, but were unable to reach them either.

... Eventually, the family was picked up by a Venezuelan fishing vessel.



The Gastonguays hoped to reach the vast archipelago nation of Kiribati, part of which is shown in this 2001 photo. (Torsten Blackwood/AFP/Getty Images)

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