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SAN BLAS, Mexico - Three Mexican fishermen adrift in a 25-foot fiberglass fishing boat for nine months and nine days were expected to return to their homeport of San Blas the week of August 21.

Initial reports picked up August 9 disagreed on whether the three young men in their 20s were at sea three months or nine months.

"It was nine months and nine days," said Jesus Vidana, one of the survivors. " One of the guys on the boat [had] a watch that shows the months and the days."

The anglers' disabled boat was spotted near a tiny atoll called Baker's Island, midway between Hawaii and Australia - nearly 5,500 miles west of their departure point - by a Taiwanese tuna fishing trawler owned by Koo's Fishing Co. of the Marshall Islands. Manager Eugene Muller said the same boat had picked up two other drifting fishermen from Kiribati five months ago. Those men had been at sea more than two months.

Two days after the San Blas anglers' miraculous rescue, Mexican government officials told reporters that two other men had been onboard the boat when the vessel left San Blas . The two as-yet unnamed men died at sea and their bodies thrown overboard.

Reuter's News Service on August 17 quoted a local San Blas government official as saying no one in the village knew that two other men were onboard. The survivors didn't mention their boat mates when initially interviewed by Mexican media from their rescue ship August 16, but later told officials the men had refused to eat, and succumbed to starvation - one in January and the other in February.

This survival story will go on record as one of the longest lost-at-sea sagas in modern history, surpassing British Vice Admiral William Bligh's six-week journey to Timor following the Bounty mutiny, and challenging or exceeding Chinese sailor Poon Lim's four months in the South Atlantic in 1942 after a German U-boat torpedoed the British Merchant Ship on which he worked.

The trio of shark fishermen - Vidana, Salvador Ordonez and Lucio Rendon - left their village near San Blas on October 28, 2005 for what they had assumed was a three-week fishing trip. While on the trip, however, one of their motors failed and the other ran out of gas, leaving them at the mercy of winds, waves and strong westerly currents.

They said they survived their 5,500-mile odyssey by eating "raw fish, ducks and seagulls" and collecting rainwater to drink.

There were times when we had only one bird to share among the three of us," recounted Vidana, adding that they once went 15 days without anything to eat.

They had no radio, but did have a compass, flashlights, water and a Bible which they read daily. By trip's end, reports say there were but a few worn pages left in the battered book.

"We never lost hope because there is a God up there," Vidana said during a telephone interview from the rescue ship just days after they were picked up.

The men were all asleep when they were spotted. Once aboard the Koo's ship, they were unable to communicate with the Chinese-speaking crew.

The men's onboard interview with the Televisa News station August 16 shocked family and friends in the fishing villages of San Blas and El Limon; most had long given up the men for dead and first learned of their miraculous journey and rescue when Mexican media began broadcasting their story.

They were reported to be sunburned and underweight but otherwise in good health. And though now safe, coming home to Mexico will still take time. The Mexican government said they will send someone to the Marshall Islands to pick up the men after the fishing trawler returns to port, possibly by August 24.

"I knew we would be found," said Vidana.