Two lost fishermen from Kiribati drifted for 33 days in the Pacific Ocean before they washed into an atoll of the Marshall Islands, 560 kilometres from their island home.

Reaching the Namdrik Atoll turned out to be fateful for Uein Buranibwe, 53, and Temaei Tontaake, 26, because they not only survived but also found a descendant of their missing uncle there.

On Nov. 25, the Namdrik residents took them to the only person in the atoll who spoke their language and she turned out to be a descendant of Tontaake's uncle Bairo, who was lost at sea from Marakei in the 1950s. The uncle landed in the atoll and stayed marrying a native.

"Now we know what happened to my uncle," said Tontaake, according to Courier Mail.

The two were sailing home at night from a neighboring Kiribati atoll 50 kilometres away when they got lost on Oct. 22. In the next 33 days, they survived by eating tuna and drinking salt water.

The U.S. Coast Guard searched for the missing fishermen for three days before giving up.

There was an instance when they saw boats but they were too far to be seen and was not rescued.

They were not in bad shape when Lt. Cmdr. George McKenzie, a Marshall Islands Sea Patrol adviser, met them in Namdrik.

It took Buranibwe and Tontaake another three weeks to sail to the Marshall Islands capital of Majuro, where they are waiting to be flown back to Kiribati by the Air Marshall Islands airline.