Adrift: Seventy-Six Days Lost at Sea

by Steven Callahan

The ocean persists, monotonously bombarding us. Please don’t knock us over; I can’t survive a capsize. If I am thrown into the sea I will shiver until the earth quakes. My lips will turn blue, my skin white. My grasp will loosen. The sea will fold her blanket over me for one last time, and I will sleep forever.

My face feels permanently carved into a worried frown. In the dark I imagine a skullish face without comfort or compassion staring into my own. The sounds of the sea are like gun blasts, and I drift in and out of semiconscious dreams of war.

Finally blackness yields to gray. Colors begin to blossom. Morning sun sneaks into my dungeon and brings me a glimmer of hope. I have survived the night. The coming of day has never meant so much; but the gale rages on. I’ve often experienced gales at sea, but belowdecks there has always been a separation, if slight, from the storm. This tempest rages within the raft as well as out.

What kept the Baileys, the Robertsons, and Poon Urn alive? Experience, preparation, equipment, and luck.

Time will pass. In months I will look back on this hell from a comfortable seat in the future . . .