New Millionaires in Nayarit?

You may not have heard about this, but three fishermen from San Blas, Nayarit (see map) spent nine months adrift at sea in a very small boat, and wound up near the Marshall Islands in the South Pacific.

Unlike Thor Heyerdahl, they didn't do it on purpose. But it looks like their experience will be rewarding, as they are now negotiating a movie contract which will net them several million dollars. Here is an excerpt from the recent development:

MEXICO CITY — Three Mexicans who spent nine months drifting across the Pacific Ocean in a flimsy fishing boat, eating raw fish and sea birds, are to be paid at least $3.8 million to turn their story into a movie.

The three — all fishermen who said they were too poor to afford a better boat or modern fishing tackle — have signed a contract to sell their story to an Atlanta-based company, said a government official in San Blas, the fishing town where they began their odyssey.

The company negotiated eight-year, exclusive rights to market the story to film companies, book publishers and merchandisers, said government official Silverio Aspericueta, adding that the final payment could be even higher. He said the company's name was Ezekiel 22.

"The $3.8 million, they said it could be double that. That is a base. That is still an initial agreement," Aspericueta, part of a team of federal, state and municipal officials who led the negotiations on the fishermen's behalf, told Reuters by telephone.

The men were feared lost when their 25-foot fiberglass boat ran into trouble off Mexico's Pacific coast last November.

As their families gave them up for dead, they drifted more than 5,000 miles before being picked up in August by a Taiwanese tuna trawler near the remote Marshall Islands in the South Pacific.

I was curious about why their company would be called Ezekiel 22, and looked it up; but I don't have a clue!