It was a real-life Castaway story when then 51-year-old Joseph Rangel set off with his lifelong friend Lorenzo Madrid, 50, and a 24-year-old guide, Jose Luis Ramos Garcia, on a seven-day fishing adventure off the coast of California.

It was October 2000 and the trio planned a fishing trip in the Sea of Cortez, an excursion with a group of 12 aboard a 95-foot vessel, where the goal was to angle for yellowtail. But Rangel and Madrid wanted more — booking a separate side trip meant to last two hours. The short excursion led to them being stranded for two weeks, and ultimately one of the men not make it home.

Rangel, then a quality-control manager for an aerospace company, and Madrid, a drug-store manager, were aboard a 22-foot skiff with Ramos when he steered south instead of north for a full 90 minutes.

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Facing the wrong direction, and up against heavy winds, the boat ultimately ran aground. Soon, the men would find themselves stranded on a deserted island 15 miles off the coast of Baja with nothing but crabs, snails and bugs to eat, along with “three cans of beer, four 15-oz. bottles of water and a Dr. Pepper,” Rangel told PEOPLE in a 2000 interview.

Rangel went on to describe what happened next, with the men using driftwood oars to attempt to row their vessel to the mainland before heavy winds ran them aground and wrecked the boat. Next, they built a raft from the wreckage, steering it toward land and making stops to sleep in caves, eating raw crabs and bugs along the three-day journey.

But soon, they realized they had somehow gone in a circle, with Rangel telling PEOPLE, “We did all that work, and we were right back where we started.”

They attempted again and again until 11 days into their ordeal, Madrid lost consciousness.

“I tried to get a pulse,” Rangel said at the time, explaining he pulled his friend to shore but realized, “He was gone.”

A day and a half later, Ramos and Rangel would be rescued by commercial divers on a small boat. The stretch of island on which the vessel ran aground was so remote that rescue efforts covering a 25-mile area had missed the area completely.

Rangel lost 30 pounds in the nearly two weeks he was stranded and was treated for an ulcer, a bacterial infection and blood clots in his legs — all while mourning the loss of his childhood friend.

Speaking to press from his hospital bed, Rangel said the episode could have been avoided had there been proper equipment on board the fishing charter, which he maintained had no radio, flares or lifejackets.

“A simple radio would have taken care of it, simple safety equipment and a plan if something went wrong,” Rangel told The Daily Journal.

Despite the odds, Rangel survived — a somewhat miraculous feat, noted San Felipe Port Captain Felipe de Jesus Vallecillo to PEOPLE in 2000: “What they did to survive was extraordinary. A lot of days went by for them to be without water. They really fought to stay alive.”