Adrift: Seventy-Six Days Lost at Sea

by Steven Callahan

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

Hunger is a witch from whom there is no escape. Her spells conjure these visions of food and deepen the pain.

Before this voyage, I always had what I needed—food, shelter, clothing, and companionship—yet I was often dissatisfied when I didn’t get everything I wanted, when people didn’t meet my expectations, when a goal was thwarted, or when I couldn’t acquire some material goody. My plight has given me a strange kind of wealth, the most important kind. I value each moment that is not spent in pain, desperation, hunger, thirst, or loneliness.

Nine ships did not see me. A dozen sharks tested me. Now it is done, finally over, finished.

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 washed 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.