Adrift: 76 Days Lost at Sea - Overview

Overview

Callahan departed Newport, Rhode Island, USA in 1981 on Napoleon Solo, a 6.5 meter sloop he designed and built himself, singlehandedly sailing to Bermuda, and continuing to England with friend Chris Latchem. He left Cornwall that fall, bound for Antigua as part of the Mini Transat 6.50 single-handed sailing race from Penzance, England, but dropped out of the race in La Coruña, Spain. Bad weather had sunk several boats in the fleet and damaged many others including Napoleon Solo. Callahan made repairs and continued voyaging down the coast of Spain and Portugal, out to Madeira and the Canaries. He departed El Hierro in the Canary Islands on January 29, 1982, still headed for Antigua. In a growing gale, seven days out, his vessel was badly holed by an unknown object during a night storm, and became swamped, although it did not sink outright due to watertight compartments Callahan had designed into the boat. In his book, Callahan writes that he suspects the damage occurred from a collision with a whale. Unable to stay aboard Napoleon Solo due to it being full of water and getting overwhelmed by breaking seas, he escaped into a six-person Avon inflatable life raft, measuring about six feet across. He stood off in the raft, but managed to get back aboard several times by diving below to retrieve a piece of cushion, a sleeping bag, and an emergency kit containing, among other things, some food, navigation charts, a short spear gun, flares, a torch, solar stills for producing fresh water and a copy of Sea Survival, a survival manual written by fellow ocean survivor Dougal Robertson. Before dawn, a big breaking sea parted the life raft from Napoleon Solo, and Callahan drifted away. The raft drifted westward with the South Equatorial Current and the trade winds. After exhausting the meager food supplies he was able to salvage from the sinking sloop, Callahan survived by "learning to live like an aquatic caveman." He ate primarily mahi-mahi as well as triggerfish, which he speared, along with flying fish, barnacles, and birds that he captured. The sea life was all part of an ecosystem that evolved and followed him for 1,800 nautical miles (3,300 km) across the ocean. He collected drinking water from two solar stills and various jury-rigged devices for collecting rainwater, which together produced on average just over 1 US pint (0.47 L) of water per day. No rescue was initiated despite Callahan's use of an EPIRB (Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon) and many flares. EPIRBs were not monitored by satellites at the time, and he was in a part of the ocean too remote to be heard by aircraft. Ships did not spot his flares. While adrift, he spotted nine ships, most in the two sea lanes he crossed. But from the beginning, Callahan knew that he could not rely upon rescue but instead must, for an undetermined time, rely upon himself and maintaining a shipboard routine for survival. He routinely exercised, navigated, prioritized problems, made repairs, fished, improved systems, and built food and water stocks for emergencies. On the eve of April 20, 1982, he spotted lights on the island of Marie-Galante, south east of Guadeloupe. The next day, his 76th afloat in the raft, fishermen picked him up just offshore, drawn to him by birds hovering over the raft, which were attracted by the ecosystem that had developed around it. During the ordeal, he faced sharks, raft punctures, equipment deterioration, physical deterioration, and mental stress. Having lost a third of his weight and being covered with scores of saltwater sores, he was taken to a local hospital for an afternoon, but left that evening and spent the following weeks recovering on the island and while hitchhiking on boats up through the West Indies. He found within his journey many gifts and profoundly positive elements as well as suffering, describing it at one point as "A view of heaven from a seat in hell." He still enjoys sailing and the sea, which he calls the world's greatest wilderness. Since his survival drift, he's made dozens of additional offshore passages and ocean crossings, most of them with no more than 2 other crew. This incident is featured on the television show I Shouldn't Be Alive, episode 76 Days Adrift...