Adrift: Thoughts

Steven Callahan’s survival story Adrift had me fully engrossed within the first ten minutes. I finished the entire book in two days because I could not put it down.

Callahan shares the story of his disastrous attempt at a solo crossing of the Atlantic. He sailed from the Canaries in January, 1982 on his ship Napoleon Solo. Seven days out, he was asleep in his cabin when the side of his ship suddenly burst open, spilling the sea into his little world. In a few desperate moments, he grabbed what he could and jumped into the life raft that would be his home for the next 76 days. Unable to move his small vessel against the current, Callahan drifted over 1,800 miles across the ocean. Battling storms, sharks, blistering thirst, debilitating hunger, and the constant strain of never being able to rest for more than a few hours at a time, it is miraculous that he was able to pull through.

One of the most captivating elements of Callahan’s narrative is his relationship with the school of fish that accompanied him on his journey. They arrived almost the very first day and nudged him through the floor of his raft nearly every hour of his crossing.  They provided him with life sustaining food, and more importantly, with companionship. They even left the sea on the same day as him, being captured by the very fishermen who rescued Callahan from his raft. He marveled frequently at how accommodating the fish were. As he grew weaker, they seemed to do their best to help him.

“Why, when I had trouble hunting, did the dorado come closer? Why did they make it increasingly easier for me as I and my weapon became more broken and weak, until in the end they lay on their sides right under my point? Why have they provided me just enough food to hang on for eighteen hundred nautical miles? I know that they are only fish, and I am only a man. We do what we must and only what Nature allows us to do in this life. Yet sometimes the fabric of life is woven into such a fantastic pattern. I needed a miracle and my fish gave it to me. That and more.”

There is no doubt that miraculous circumstances combined to bring Callahan home. He spent over two months literally straddling the line between life and death. Just when he seemed to have enough water, his spear would break and he would have no way of catching fish. Once his spear was repaired and he had food, his still would break and he would not be able to get water. Just after a rainstorm allowed him to collected 6 ounces of drinking water, his raft would blow a hole. After patching the hole, he would lie down and try to rest, only to be awoken by a shark pounding his body through the bottom of the raft and he would have to get up and defend himself. He seemed to have the entire ocean against him, yet through perseverance and ingenuity, he always managed to keep his head above water.

“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.”

My rating: 9 out of 10