Adrift: Seventy-six Days Lost at Sea

by Steven Callahan

  I have long, leisurely meals and tour the island. I’m so excited by everything that it’s difficult to sleep at night. By dawn I’m awake again and can’t wait to get at the world. Instead of resting properly, I get overtired and cranky. People are trying to help me, I realize, but I am beginning to feel my autonomy slip from my grasp. The pressure is getting to me and my temper will probably soon get to everyone else.

  My parents try to convince me that I should fly home with them and convalesce. I tell them I can’t, that I don’t want to be a patient. What I want is to regain my strength here, hitchhike on boats up to Antigua to collect my mail, and then fly back to Maine.

  I spend the next several days getting to know the people of Marie Galante. The bar and restaurant of Hotel Le Salut are open to the street. People often come in to talk. Every few days the fishermen who picked me up stop in. They actually live on Guadeloupe. The day they brought me in, they took their fish home and sold it late into the night. I would like to go out in Clemence again, perhaps go fishing with them, but it never works out. My walks lengthen. Everywhere I go the islanders stop me. They invite me into their homes or surround me on the street. Those with whom I can speak make jokes about my sure-fire all-fish diet plan. I watch children fill drums with water from spigots that poke up from the sidewalks and roll them home, pushing them with their feet. I feel at ease here, at home. The people of Marie Galante have adopted me.

  Some people have started to call me the Super Fisherman or the Superman. I try to explain to them that while I was adrift I kept struggling to survive not because I was heroic but because it was the easiest thing for me to do, easier than dying. One day I am honored by a visit from the local witch doctor. He stares close in my face, his eyes bulging out. He chants a bunch of words, shakes some things around, and looks at me curiously. After he leaves, Mathias tells me who he is and that he has cast a spell to speed my recovery.

  The next day I get incredible stomach cramps, develop a high fever, and begin a long bout with diarrhea. For a while I think that I have kidded myself, that I am going to die after all. I ask Mathias not to tell the medicine man about my “recovery.” The Creole cooking is excellent, but it is very spicy. Dr. Lachet and Dr. Dellanoy agree that I must lay off the hot peppers for a while. A classic case of way too much way too soon. It’s pretty tough for four or five days, but I slowly pull out of it, thanks to the good doctors, my parents, Mathias, and Marie.

  With my saviors: Paulinus Williams and Jules and Jean-Louis Paquet

  With natives of Marie Galante on the beach where I landed in St. Louis, about a week after I arrived

  I finally recover enough to walk again. I have been on the island ten days. I realize that it is time for me to go. I’ve met with several sailors. Nick Keig, whom I know of but have never met, arrives with the Three Legs of Mann IV and agrees to take me on to Guadeloupe. My parents accept my decision rather well. They help me to get things together, give me money and food treats, and don’t try to hold me back. When everything is ready, I hobble down to the concrete pier beside the beach on which Clemence delivered Ducky and me, lower myself into the waiting rubber dinghy, and am shuttled out to the Three Legs. I wave good-by to my many friends on the island. I know that I am relaunched into real life. The crew on the Three Legs hoist sail, we turn the bow toward Guadeloupe, and I watch my new home recede into the distance.

  Epilogue

  It is hard to believe that my little ocean odyssey now rests serenely some sixteen years in the past. It seems like lifetimes ago, or as if it had happened to someone else, yet it also keeps me as constant company as the daily sun.

  Science tells us that virtually every cell in our body (except in the brain) is replaced every ten years, so in a sense the experience did happen to someone else. I hope that I have changed a bit psychologically and emotionally too.

  At the same time, whenever I fill a tub with water, I think, This is more fresh water than what I lived on for two and a half months. I feel a slight pang of guilt for letting it escape down the drain. When someone says, “Let’s get something to eat; I’m starving,” a little bell goes off in my head and I think, Well, not really. I know the difference between hungry and starving. Often the experience sneaks up on me. Two people touching hands or a phrase that reveals a simple human kindness can drill into the core of the aching loneliness and desperation I once knew, and I find myself in tears. So too does my soul feel wrung by people’s pain and the dignity with which they must sometimes bear it. Finally, even after all this time, the spirit of the dorados and their oceanic home have not diminished for me. I think about them daily, and still feel their spirit dwarfing mine. Whenever I eat fish—occasionally mahi-mahi, the popular restaurant name for dorado—it reminds me of my connection to the whole world and my need to remember that no life should be devoured without thought or appreciation.

  When I washed ashore in 1982, like many survivors I had no idea that in many ways my journey had just begun. Physically I was little changed. For six weeks I struggled to get around on my inflated legs, but the swelling eventually subsided and I was left with but a few durable scars to remind me that a day on the ocean is not necessarily a day at the beach. Today it takes a strong tan to reveal the dozens of small white circles that mark the memory of saltwater sores. After about six months ashore my weight had returned to normal and I had rebuilt most of my muscles that starvation devoured. The telltale lines of starvation across my fingernails had grown out, and I was left to face the fact that my drift’s only real physical cost was that it seemed to have kick-started middle age. I ate less and for the first time found I could pretty easily add some padding around the old midriff. In the mornings, wads of hair lay on my pillow, so that now I have joined the world of the follically challenged. As for serious long-term damage, who really knows? I wasn’t about to have my liver or kidneys pulled out for inspection.

  I’ve continued to sail too. The sea remains the world’s greatest wilderness. To my mind, voyaging through wildernesses, be they full of woods or waves, is essential to the growth and maturity of the human spirit. It is in the wilderness that you really learn who you are. It is in facing the challenges of the wilderness that the thickness of your wallet becomes irrelevant and your capabilities become the truer measure of your value.

  After first crawling ashore, I found life more free than I ever imagined. More amusing too. When rowing across a harbor, I saw a little fish swimming by. I simply snapped it out of the water with what had become lightning-quick reflexes and tossed it down my throat, much to the surprise, if not the horror, of my passengers. When friends apologized for the appearance of their apartments or cars, I could only chuckle and ask, “Well, does it leak? Is it bigger than a dog bed? Does it leap about all over the place?” It seemed as if nothing and no one could bother or intimidate me. Everything was possible. What was the worst that could happen after all? Over time, though, life got complicated again and memories faded. My expectations returned, and I found the same old complaints seeping back into my daily routine. Yet always, somewhere in the back of my head, a little voice reminds me that every day is a gift, not a right. I know that to be well fed, painless, and in the company of friends and loved ones are privileges too few enjoy in this often brutal world.

  The real story ofss Adrift is not so much about me as it is about the magic and mystery of the sea and how it delivered me two priceless gifts. True, my odyssey showed me that I was a lot stronger and more resilient than I ever thought possible, and this is no small thing. But more important, the sea probed numerous weaknesses and failures. It had not been Katherine’s or Frisha’s fault that I could not soften and had been hopeless in relationships. In many ways, I had been equally hopeless in life. When my ideals had not matched reality, I had fled reality. I could not accept my own limitations as a human being nor those of the people around me. I was a man alone and quite adrift well before the sea cast me into Rubber Ducky. No varnished hero took the ensuing voyage, and when I washe
d ashore it was with the gratitude that I had been given a chance to examine my weaknesses and learn to compensate for them. That was a far greater gift than any endurance record or human accolades.

  Much of what I do today, from writing to lecturing on survival, is the direct or indirect result of my drift on the good ship Rubber Ducky. By the time I reached the shore of Marie Galante, I was determined to use my experience in some positive way, to share the positive elements of what the sea had bestowed upon me. Yet I felt that only other sailors and a few friends would truly be interested in my tale. I was not prepared for how far it would reach into the lives of people ashore. Over the years, both before and after the publication of Adrift, I found myself participating in all kinds of media projects that helped me to spread the dorados’ spirit. Survivors of plane crashes, shipwrecks, and avalanches who could relate to various parts of my experience approached me with their tales, as did those who suffered with cancer and other debilitating illnesses, were victims of accidents or spousal or parental abuse, and who’d undergone survival experiences seemingly much different from my own. I discovered that Adrift had tapped into the most universal human vein: the struggle to survive. To a greater or lesser extent, we all do it every day, and virtually all of us must face at least one severe test in our lives. Not only did my survival voyage give me insights into myself, but it also gave me the opportunity to embrace humanity despite its weaknesses and to forge new and meaningful relationships. I had gained a new purpose. I continue to spend time plumbing the depths of this new sea of survival. What are the common threads that tie us survivors together? What are the common stages of survival experiences? What are the successful strategies that survivors employ? How can we use these experiences as cornerstones on which to build better lives, even when we know our physical deaths are imminent? And how can we avoid letting them become our tombstones even when we are allowed to live well beyond the original trauma? Numerous other survivors and experts in wide-ranging fields have shed enormous light on the answers to these questions, which unfortunately are too complex to examine in this small space.

  For now, I can say that I am grateful for this experience and for the stream down which it continues to float me. I would not volunteer to go through it again, but the sea that tested me also proved forgiving enough to let me live, to show me how to live. For the first time in my life I felt truly humbled. It is just another irony with which my tale is filled—the heartfelt realization of one’s insignificance yields a calming sense of being completely connected to the greater whole. As a tiny part of the world and humanity, I now feel more at peace and much larger than I ever felt as a man alone.

  Perhaps it is another irony that I do not view survival itself as particularly noble. To my way of thinking, my survival was, in some lights, a failure. I could not let go and die because my fears, failures, and need to make amends drove me on. If I found any real courage, it was only in recognizing my need to do something in order to give my sorry years of life some meaning. It is the quality of our lives that is important. How much spirit we are able to share with the world, to aid it in its struggle to survive, far outweighs some record of a long life. That this sounds like a cliche makes it no less true. My own goal is to live in such a way that I will be able to face my own death with equanimity and grace whenever the time comes.

  Meanwhile, I try not to dwell on what might happen if I stretch my limits. Avoiding risk is not much of a goal. I am probably a bit more cautious these days, but I often remind listeners that, whether you crawl into a hole or walk a high wire, nobody gets out of here alive. We cannot grow without challenge. Challenges routinely produce crises that severely test us. However, crises also offer us the greatest opportunities. People going through tough times typically feel isolated, and unsure what to do. When I face a crisis, I try to keep in mind a few simple concepts: we cannot control our destinies, but we can help to shape them; we must try to make life hop a bit, but we must also accept that we can only do the best we can. Bearing these things in mind, when I feel most alone and desperate, I take comfort from all those who have suffered greater ordeals and survived, especially those who, despite it all, have even learned to thrive.

  1999

  About the Author

  STEVEN CALLAHAN is the author of Adrift, Seventy-Six Days Lost at Sea, which chronicles his life-raft drift across half the Atlantic in 1982, became an New York Times bestseller and has been translated into fifteen languages. He also wrote Capsized for survivor Jim Nalepka who spent four months with four other men on an overturned, half-flooded boat. Callahan has contributed writings, illustrations, and photos to more than a dozen other books, many about seamanship or survival, and has authored hundreds of articles for the marine press worldwide. He’s served as contributing editor to Sailor and Sail magazines, and as senior editor at Cruising World, for which he continues to do special projects such as testing new boats and lifesaving equipment. He also speaks publicly and consults, most recently for director Ang Lee on an upcoming film adaptation of the novel Life of Pi. His website is www.stevencallahan.net.