Adrift: Seventy-six Days Lost at Sea

by Steven Callahan

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Table of Contents

  Map

  Dedication

  Copyright

  Acknowledgments

  Preface to the Mariner Edition

  Introduction

  LOG OF NAPOLEON SOLO

  NERVES EXPOSED

  THE WITCH AND HER CURSE: HUNGER AND THIRST

  DREAM KEEP

  TO WEAVE A WORLD

  CRIES AND WHISPERS

  TWICE TO HELL AND BACK

  ROAD OF TRASH

  THE DUTCHMAN

  DEATH

  LIFE

  A MAN ALONE

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  This book is dedicated to people everywhere who know, have known, or will know suffering, desperation, or loneliness.

  First Mariner Books edition 2002

  Copyright © 1986, 1999 by Steven Callahan

  All rights reserved

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York, 10003.

  www.hmhbooks.com

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

  Callahan, Steven.

  Adrift : seventy-six days lost at sea / Steven Callahan ; illustrations

  by the author.—1 st Mariner Books ed.

  p. cm.

  “A Mariner book.”

  Originally published: Boston : Houghton Mifflin, 1986.

  ISBN 0-618-25732-2

  1 Callahan, Steven. 2. Napoleon Solo (Yacht) 3. Survival after airplane accidents, shipwrecks, etc. 4. North Atlantic Ocean. I. Title.

  G530.C24C35 2003

  910‘9163‘1—DC21 2002191299

  ISBN 978-0-618-25732-4 (pbk.)

  eISBN 978-0-547-52656-0

  v2.1212

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to the Adventure Library for permission to utilize new material.

  Acknowledgments

  A huge number of people played a role in the creation of this book, directly and indirectly. First, there are those who introduced me to sailing and taught me the skills that enabled me to survive my experience: I am especially grateful to my parents and to the people of the Boy Scouts organization, particularly Arthur Adams. My ex-wife, Frisha Hugessen, was very supportive and tolerant of my projects, including the building of Napoleon Solo, while Chris Latchem helped me to achieve my goals and to develop techniques for confronting practical problems.

  I am grateful to Dougal Robertson for his excellent survival manual, Sea Survival, which unfortunately is out of print. The Robertsons, the Baileys, and other voyagers who went before me kept me company through their books and provided not only essential practical advice but also the inspiration to pull through.

  I might not ever have made it ashore had it not been for my timely meeting with the Paquet brothers and Paulinus Williams. They and the other people of Marie Galante were very kind and helpful during the final stage of my voyage and my subsequent recovery.

  Kathy Massimini gave me an unbelievable amount of moral support and editorial advice throughout the writing of this book. Every author probably relies on someone like Kathy to pull him through the hard times and keep him on track, but I can’t believe there are that many people out there with as much faith, tolerance, and insight.

  Harry Foster, my editor at Houghton Mifflin, put a great deal of faith in me and guided me with a firm hand and patient ear.

  I would also like to acknowledge all the people who aided in SAR operations and who kept circulating information and messages about me and Solo even after official channels were closed. In addition they gave my family a great deal of moral support. Among the many I would like to thank are the amateur and CB radio network, William Wanklyn, Francis Carter, Sail magazine’s staff, Hood Sailmakers, Oscar Fabian Gonzales, the Steggalls, Beth Pollock, Hayden Brown, Cruising World’s staff, the late Phil Weld, Mathias Achoun, his friend Freddie, and Maurice Briand. There are many others. I must also thank my family for their efforts in trying to locate me and keeping faith.

  Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to the sea. It has taught me quite a lot in life. Although the sea was my greatest enemy, it was also my greatest ally. I know intellectually that the sea is indifferent, but her richness allowed me to survive. In giving up her dorados, she was giving up her own children, so to speak, in order that I might live.

  I truly hope that the remainder of my life will prove worthy of all the sacrifices made on my behalf.

  Preface to the Mariner Edition

  Shortly after the first publication of Adrift, a reporter from a rather prestigious newspaper concluded his interview of me with the question that virtually every interviewer inevitably asked: “Did your survival drift set some kind of record?”

  As usual, I patiently explained to him that, to my mind, records are irrelevant. I’d spoken to many survivors who’d had experiences much shorter than mine but who had suffered every bit as much and had as important stories to tell. I noted that in any daily paper I could find accounts of those who somehow managed to live in circumstances I thought would be unbearable. I added that our nation’s people seem consumed with records—longest, biggest, farthest, fastest … These days there are records for everything. “Why, you could be the first guy to sail around the lighthouse backwards with his pants down, and that, I suppose, would be a record,” I concluded. The next day in the paper, under a photo of me, read a caption: “Callahan says about his journey that it was like sailing around the lighthouse backwards with his pants down.” I got one side-splitting laugh out of that. Perhaps I should have been offended, but instead I had become fascinated by the numerous ways in which people perceived my experience. In any event, this life is full of trials and tribulations, so you have to capture humor whenever and wherever you can find it.

  I have been amazed that Adrift has remained in print for more than a decade, and the fact that it now joins a collection of books by and about such adventurers as Slocum and Shackleton is nothing less than astounding. Although I’m very nattered and grateful, I doubt I could fill even one of Shackleton’s boots. Besides, I feel far from being the sole creator of whatever I may have accomplished in my oceanic odyssey and the writing of Adrift. Whatever accolades I or Adrift have received I humbly accept, not for myself but for the incredible grace and awesome complexity of the universe. Drifting halfway across the Atlantic and learning to live like an aquatic caveman showed me time and again that I am less an individual than part of a continuum, joined to all things and driven by them more than I am in control of my own path. Adrift may have flowed from my hand, but it is the result of the countless forces and individuals who shaped me, led me through a remarkable experience, and allowed me to live long enough to tell it.

  People have interpreted Adrift in many ways. Many read it strictly as an adventure tale. A great number have seen the spiritual and philosophical elements of the book, which I hope will remain enduring elements. People have interpreted these elements in numerous ways to fit their own religions and cosmologies. I will not debate them. In fact, I welcome them. Writing a book is what I imagine having a child must be like. You do your best, let it grow up and mature, then wish it well as it trots off into the world to make a life of its own. Adrift has done that. As readers find new meanings in it, I do not find my own views of the experience or my original intentions when writing about it diminished. They are expanded.

  Still, on occasion I have heard a perception that makes me uneasy. Some people have labeled me as some kind of hero. I do admit to a certain pride that
I was able to hang in there, be inventive, survive, but this is a tale about failure as much as heroism. It is a tale about the generosity of life as much as it is about the trials through which it puts us. It is a tale about second chances, which I am very happy now to have. I may have succeeded in some ways, but my drift showed me my many weaknesses only too clearly, and I’m sure I made as many errors as any person could. Years after the experience, a ten-year-old boy noted that, in Adrift, I complained about the lack of wire in the fishing kit, but I described a light on the top of the raft powered by a battery in the water. “Weren’t they connected by a piece of wire?” he asked innocently. Duh. Sometimes it takes the wisdom of a ten-year-old to show us how stupid we can be. Next time, he’s coming along for the ride.

  Ellsworth, Maine

  1999

  Introduction

  It is always difficult to decide where a story begins and where it ends. However, some experiences—a romantic evening, a weekend retreat, or a voyage—have fairly distinct dividing lines. They are what I call “whole experiences.” To a large degree, the first twenty-nine years of my life represent one whole experience that rests outside the scope of this book. But within those years are the seeds of this story. People often ask me how I got myself into such a fix in the first place. How did I know what to do? Was the boat I lost new or had it been tried before? Why was I sailing offshore in such a small boat? The answers to these questions are an integral part of the story, its foundation. The foundation was laid in 1964, when, at age twelve, I began sailing.

  I fell in love with sailing instantly. I can think of a million reasons why it appealed to me so strongly—the immediate relationship with the environment, the simplified lifestyle devoid of “modern inconveniences” (as naval architect Dick Newick puts it), the sheer beauty of it—but all of the reasons can be summed up succinctly: everything about it felt right.

  Before I ever began to sail, I thought that if I had lived in the 1700s I would probably have become a mountain man, or some such thing. Then I became enthralled with the history of the sailing ship, of square-riggers battling their way around Cape Horn. I yearned for the romanticism and adventure of ages past. Shortly after I began sailing, I read a book called Tinkerbelle, by Robert Manry. In June 1965 Manry had sailed his 13.5-foot boat across the Atlantic in seventy-eight days, a record at the time. Something about the simplicity of Manry’s boat, and his accomplishment of so much with so little, struck a chord in my heart. He showed me that a life of adventure was still possible in the latter part of the twentieth century.

  From that time on I dreamed of crossing the Atlantic in a small boat. As years went by I learned the skills necessary to accomplish this goal. I read books about all of the great voyages: the raft crossings of the Pacific by Heyerdahl and Willis, and the circumnavigations of Slocum, the Hiscocks, and Guzzwell. Before I was out of high school, I had helped to build a forty-footer; by 1974 I had begun a boatbuilding career and was living aboard; by 1977 I was designing boats and venturing offshore as far as Bermuda; by 1979 I was designing and teaching design full time. All along Manry and Tinkerbelle lurked in the back of my mind and served as an inspiration, a way to pull everything together and give my life a focus.

  In 1980 I sold my twenty-eight-foot trimaran and put all of my resources into the creation of Napoleon Solo, a small cruiser. I relied on a great deal of aid from my ex-wife, Frisha Hugessen, my good friend Chris Latchem, and a host of others. The design was unusual, though not at all radical. We took pains to create a handsome, meticulously constructed cold-molded craft, excellent in light airs and well-balanced and forgiving in heavy weather. Solo became much more than a boat to me. I knew her every nail and screw, every grain of wood. It was as if I’d created a living being. Sailors tend to feel that way about their boats. Chris and I gave Solo a harsh thousand-mile shakedown cruise from Annapolis to Massachusetts through late-fall gales. By the spring of 1981, I was ready to follow in Manry’s wake.

  I was not interested in setting a record as Manry had done. Solo was just over twenty-one feet long. There weren’t many boats of her size that had made the crossing, but there had been a few as small as twelve feet. For me the crossing was more of an inner voyage and a pilgrimage, of sorts. It would also serve as a measuring stick for my competence as a seaman, a designer, and a craftsman. I figured that if I made it to England safely, I’d have accomplished every major goal I’d ever set for myself. From England I would continue south and west, measuring Solo’s performance in a singlehanded transatlantic race called the Mini-Transat. That would carry me to Antigua. In the spring I would return to New England, thereby completing a circumnavigation of the North Atlantic. To qualify for the Mini-Transat, I had to sail six hundred miles alone in Solo, so I entered the Bermuda 1–2 Race and sailed from Newport to Bermuda. From there I would make the crossing to England with Chris.

  When I departed the United States, it was with everything I owned, except for some tools. Few insurance brokers had wanted to talk to me, and those who did set such exorbitant premiums that it would cost less to buy materials for a second boat. I decided to take the risk. I told people that the worst that could happen was that I’d be killed, in which case I wouldn’t be worried about collecting any insurance money. The second worst thing would be to lose Solo. It would take a while to recover, but I would. I knew plenty of other people who had lost their boats and recovered.

  Many of my friends still couldn’t understand why I wanted to undertake such a voyage, why I couldn’t test myself without crossing the Atlantic. But there was more to the crossing than simply putting myself to the test. From the first time I ventured from the shore in a boat, I felt that my spirit was touched. On my first offshore trip to Bermuda, I began to think of the sea as my chapel. It was my soul that called me to this pilgrimage.

  One friend suggested I write down my thoughts for the benefit of those who thought I was mad. While waiting for Chris in Bermuda, I sat beneath a palm tree and wrote the following: “I wish I could describe the feeling of being at sea, the anguish, frustration, and fear, the beauty that accompanies threatening spectacles, the spiritual communion with creatures in whose domain I sail. There is a magnificent intensity in life that comes when we are not in control but are only reacting, living, surviving. I am not a religious man per se. My own cosmology is convoluted and not in line with any particular church or philosophy. But for me, to go to sea is to get a glimpse of the face of God. At sea I am reminded of my insignificance—of all men’s insignificance. It is a wonderful feeling to be so humbled.”

  The Atlantic crossing to England with Chris was exhilarating—gales, fast runs, whales, dolphins. It was the stuff adventure is made of. And as we approached the coast of England, I felt I was ending the whole experience that had begun at my birth, and beginning a new one.

  LOG OF NAPOLEON SOLO

  IT IS LATE at night. The fog has been dense for days. Napoleon Solo continues to slice purposefully through the sea toward the coast of England. We should be getting very close to the Scilly Isles. We must be very careful. The tides are large, the currents strong, and these shipping lanes heavily traveled. Both Chris and I are keeping a sharp eye out. Suddenly the lighthouse looms on the rocky isles, its beam high off the water. Immediately we see breakers. We’re too close. Chris pushes the helm down and I trim the sails so that Solo sails parallel to the rocks that we can see. We time the change in bearing of the lighthouse to calculate our distance away—less than a mile. The light is charted to have a thirty-mile range. We are fortunate because the fog is not as thick as it often is back in our home waters of Maine. No wonder that in the single month of November 1893 no fewer than 298 ships scattered their bones these rocks.

  The next morning, Solo eases herself out of the white fog and over the swells in a light breeze. She slowly slips into the bay in which Penzance is nestled. The sea pounds against the granite cliffs of Cornwall on the southwest coast of England, which has claimed its own vast share of ships and lives
. The jaws of the bay hold many dangers, such as the pile of rocks known as the Lizard.

  Today the sky is bright and sunny. The sea is gentle. Green fields cap the cliffs. After our two-week passage from the Azores with only the smell of salt water in our lungs, the scent of land is sweet. At the end of every passage, I feel as if I am living the last page of a fairy tale, but this time the feeling is especially strong. Chris, who is my only crew, wings out the jib. It gently floats out over the water and tugs us past the village of Mousehole, which is perched in a crevice in the cliffs. We soon glide up to the high stone breakwater at Penzance and secure Napoleon Solo to it. With the final neat turns of docking lines around the cleats, we conclude Soto’s Atlantic crossing and the last of the goals that I began setting for myself fifteen years ago. It was then that Robert Manry showed me not only how to dream, but also how to fulfill that dream. Manry had done it in a tiny boat called, Tinkerbelle. I did it in Solo.

  Chris and I climb up the stone quay to look for customs and the nearest pub. I look down on Solo and think of how she is a reflection of myself. I conceived her, created her, and sailed her. Everything I have is within her. Together we have ended this chapter of my life. It is time to dream new dreams.

  Chris will soon depart and leave me to continue my journey with Solo alone. I’ve entered the Mini-Transat Race, which is a singlehanded affair. I don’t need to think about that for a while. Now it is time for celebration. We head off to find a pint, the first we’ve had in weeks.

  The Mini-Transat runs from Penzance to the Canaries and then on to Antigua. I want to go to the Caribbean anyway. Figure I’ll find work there for the winter. Solo is a fast-cruising boat, and I’m interested to see how she fares against the spartan racers. I think I have a shot at finishing in the money since my boat is so well prepped. Some of my opponents are putting in bulkheads and drawing numbers on sails with Magic Markers in frantic pandemonium before the start. I indulge in local pasties and fish and chips. My last-minute jobs consist of licking stamps and sampling the local brew.