Adrift: Seventy-Six Days Lost at Sea

by Steven Callahan

There is a magnificent intensity in life that comes when we are not in control but are only reacting, living, surviving.

I am caught in the sailor’s inevitable dilemma. When you are at sea you know you must reach harbor, to restock and, you hope, rest in a warm caress. You need ports and often can’t wait to get to the next. Then when you are in port, you can’t wait to get back to sea again. After a few glasses of cold beer and a few nights in a dry bed, the ocean calls, and you follow her. You need mother earth, but you love the sea.

I am comforted by the sea yet am continually awed by her. Like an old friend she is always familiar, yet she is always changing and full of surprises.

Though I feel secure in my floating nest, the storm reawakens my caution, which has slumbered for a week. Each ten-foot wave that sweeps by contains more tons of water than I care to imagine.

Visions of a rogue wave snap into my mind. Caused by the coincidence of peaks traveling in different directions or at different speeds, a rogue can grow to four times the average wave height and could throw Solo about like a toy. Converging wave troughs can also form a canyon into which we could plunge. Often such anomalies flow from different directions, forming vertical cliffs from which seas tumble in liquid avalanches.

Sailors may be struck down at any time, in calm or in storm, but the sea does not do it for hate or spite. She has no wrath to vent. Nor does she have a hand of kindness to extend. She is merely there, immense, powerful, and indifferent. I do not resent her indifference, or my comparative insignificance. Indeed, it is one of the main reasons I like to sail: the sea makes the insignificance of my own small self and of all humanity so poignant.

I have often hidden things from myself. I have sometimes fooled other people. But Nature is not such a dolt.

An eternity exists between the click of each second. I remind myself that time does not stand still. The seconds will stack up like poker chips. Seconds into minutes, minutes into hours, hours into days. Time will pass.

Desperation shakes me. I want to cry but I scold myself. Hold it back. Choke it down. You cannot afford the luxury of water wept away. I bite my lips, close my eyes, and weep within. Survival, concentrate on survival.

The waters of the world are in constant flux. Weather exists in the oceans just as it exists in the atmosphere. Undersea storms rip through the passes and canyons between underwater mountain ranges. Windflow across the earth’s surface affects and mirrors the waterflow of great ocean currents. In some areas the ocean lies barely moving, virtually parked. In others it flows like traffic on a highway. These great water roads include the Gulf Stream, and the Agulhas, Humboldt, South Equatorial, Indian Monsoon, and Labrador currents. Some travel at more than fifty miles a day. I am traveling a slower path, the North Equatorial, at six to twelve miles a day. It runs steadily with the wind toward the Caribbean.

A few years ago I ran a thirty-five-foot trimaran into a forty-foot sperm whale in the Gulf Stream. For the owner aboard it was the second such encounter in as many trips to Bermuda in the same year. We were fortunate. One hull smacked down on top of the skin-covered island, but neither the whale nor the boat was permanently damaged. The Robertsons and the Baileys, though, were both sunk by whales. Feeding near the surface at night when the bigger plankton come up, a cetacean would not have noticed Solo’s hull cutting silently through the noisy breaking of the sea. A moderate-size thirty-five tonner striking Solo’s side at ten knots would have caused substantial damage, although the collision would not even have disturbed the whale’s feeding routine. I have seen so many of them—playful porpoise, curious pilots, great fins, and strong sperm. They emerge from the depths without warning. Suddenly there’s a huge beast there. And at that moment a profound emotion—not fear—rises from the depths of my soul. It is like seeing a friend whom I thought I’d never see again, who miraculously appears and who may just as suddenly disappear forever. Whenever these massive spirits appear from the depths, I feel a wonderful electricity in the air, an aura of immense intelligence and sensitivity.

I do not like the fact that whales are hunted, but then again, I often think that the beautiful “balance of nature” is really just everything running around eating each other. And in some ways I envy the Azorians and Eskimos who hunt whales with hand-thrown harpoons from small boats. They must get dangerously close to their prey; and when the odds are even for the hunter and the hunted, they must become bound in a unique brotherhood of understanding.

Out of the infinite number of events that happen every second, many must be surrounded by odd circumstance. Yet life must be nourished with meaning just as with food, and stories give events meaning.

On February 10, my sixth day in the raft, the wind blows hard as the Atlantic continues “the shuffle,” a term sailors use for the commonly confused wave patterns of the Atlantic. Ridges of waves approach from the northeast, east, and southeast. They break on three sides of the raft, tumbling it about in a nonstop rock-and-roll dance.

Somehow I cannot accept a vision of a super humanoid, but I believe in the miraculous and spiritual way of things—existence, nature, the universe.

In my log I write: “The dorados remain, beautiful, alluring. I ask one to marry me. But her parents will not hear of it. I am not colorful enough. Imagine, bigotry even here! However, they also point out that I do not have a very bright future. It is a reasonable objection.”

If hunger is the witch, thirst is her curse. It is nagging, screaming thirst that causes me to watch each minute pass, to wait for the next sip.

It is apprehension that beds with me each night and apprehension that awakens me each day. As darkness comes and I drift off to sleep, I long to be in a place with no anxieties. How repetitious and simple my desires have become.

Robertson’s book includes tables of the sun’s declination, which I use to fix my direction at sunrise. I can do the same at sunset. At night I can fix my heading from both the North Star and Southern Cross. The heavens have provided me with an unbreakable, immortal, fully guaranteed compass.

The dorados leap in very high arcs as if they are trying to reach the clouds, catching the setting sun on their sparkling skins.

Each day, each hardship, each moment of suffering, has brought me another small step closer to salvation.

I treasure raw materials and basic tools; so much can be done with them. Paper, rope, and knives have always been my favorite human inventions.

The sun sinks down to the horizon once again, and the dorados collect for evening recess. They seem mesmerized by the calm conditions and glide about like phantoms, gently nudging us. The emerald elders still skirt the vicinity, keeping an eye on their school. I am coming to know individuals not only by their size, markings, and scars but also by their personalities. I am getting very attached to them.

He is food for a week. The glassy surface bubbles up as his body begins to rise. Taking the weight now . . . Splash. I lunge to grab him. Too late. His smooth skin slips from my fumbling fingers. The big, stiff body whirls downward like a bright dead leaf falling from a limb. His blank stare goes round and round as he sinks deeper and deeper. All of the other dorados have been watching. Like fingers reaching down to him, they descend. Deeper, still deeper. Finally their shapes converge like living petals blooming from the stamen of the dead fish. The tiny flower whirls ever deeper, getting smaller and smaller, until it is no more. The sun is gone. The waters become black and empty. I stare into the depths.

The ocean is an unbelievably vast wilderness. Pinpointing a vessel, even when its approximate position is known, is literally more difficult than finding a needle in a haystack. Even if my position could be approximated within a hundred miles, a circular area two hundred miles across, covering over thirty thousand square miles, would have to be searched in order to locate me. What the Coast Guard does not tell my family is that if I am more than a week overdue, I am most likely dead. It happens all the time. Three hundred seventy-four sailors died in U.S. waters between 1972 and 1977 in commercial fishing accidents alone. Coast Guard funding has been cut, so they are understaffed and under-equipped.

I cannot stop mourning the big dorado that I futilely slew last evening. I try to convince myself that my depression comes only from the fact that I am in desperate need of meat, but my sense of loss is not solely pragmatic. Ineffectual attempts to catch fish are nothing new, and I think little of them. I feel emotionally devastated. The dorados have become much more than food to me. They are even more than pets. I look upon them as equals—in many ways as my superiors. Their flesh keeps me alive. Their spirits keep me company. Their attacks and their resistance to the hunt make them worthy opponents, as well as friends.

It is strange how killing animals can sometimes inspire such worship of them.

I am awed by the intricate perfection of the world in which I find myself, but I am too tired for true appreciation. Instead, I collapse, depressed. I cannot lift my arms easily, but I must. Now there is more work than ever to do.

Strange wildlife begins to show. Shrill squeaking comes from the water under the raft. Saddleback porpoises appear, keeping their distance. Light and dark streaks mark the stirrups and seats that give them their name. They somersault over one another and move off, leaving behind a touch of their smiling-face spirits.

Clumps of sargasso appear more frequently and take on signs of age, which they lacked further east. They have had time to develop their own ecosystem. Clear eggs sprinkle the branches, many of which are dead, like dewdrops in a graying beard. While I pick out the eggs, a couple of crabs, about one-half inch across and sporting white graphics on their backs, scurry away. One tunnels through the weed, drops out onto the waves, and swims away like a waterbug. The other I grab and pop into my mouth like an M & M. The tiny morsel of crabmeat is a welcome relief from the taste of fish.

No second place in this race, only winning and losing. And we’re not talking ribbons or trophies, here. You’ve got to hang in and be tough.

Sometimes you can use techniques that were developed by the South Seas islanders to tell if there is land ahead. You look for such indications as wave formations as they hit a shore and bounce back out to sea, rising cumulus clouds that skyrocket to great heights from thermal currents over the land, phosphorescent lines in the water at night, and so forth.

When clouds are above you, they appear to move quickly. But as they near the horizon, you look through the atmosphere at an oblique angle and the clouds appear to move slower and slower while they also become darker. Cumulus clouds take on the illusory form of high volcanic rims or low, flat islands. Some remain still for so long that you begin to believe they are solid earth. Only by very long observation can the sailor distinguish land from clouds.

If a navigator stands on the North Pole, the North Star will sit directly overhead at ninety degrees to the horizon in all directions. The top of the world is at ninety degrees latitude. On the equator, at zero degrees latitude, Polaris dances right on the horizon. So latitude can be directly determined by the angle between the polestar and the horizon. I will try to measure the angle of the North Star to the horizon to give me my latitude.

But the ocean remains endlessly the same—swimming pool blue, three miles deep, and thousands of miles across, the loneliest place on the planet.

Dawn of the seventy-sixth day arrives. I can’t believe the rich panorama that meets my eyes. It is full of green. After months of little other than blue sky, blue fish, and blue sea, the brilliant, verdant green is overwhelming.

The frigates hover high above, drawn to me by my dorados and the flying fish on which they both feed. These fishermen saw the birds, knew there were fish here, and came to find them. They found me; but not me instead of their fish, me and their fish. Dorados. They have sustained me and have been my friends. They nearly killed me, too, and now they are my salvation. I am delivered to the hands of fishermen, my brothers of the sea. They rely on her just as I have.

I am deeply touched by the generosity of these people. Outside of my room are a number of islanders who have come to see me. They wait patiently, sitting on benches or leaning against the portico railing. I know no one on this island, but I feel as if I’m a long-lost brother who has returned home.

I stagger around like a drunk, and I must sound like one, too, because I can’t stop laughing hysterically. I guess I’m just intoxicated with being alive.

It seems that my parents have already heard the news. In fact, they knew of my arrival before many of the local authorities. Mathias was among the crowd when I was carried up from the beach, and he immediately sent a message on his CB radio to his friend Freddie in Guadeloupe. Freddie has an amplifier and rebroadcast the message. A man named Maurice Briand was fishing off the coast of Florida when he picked up the signal. He called my parents less than an hour after I stepped ashore. For days I won’t believe that this was all possible with CB radios and not ham units but it turns out to be true.

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.