Adrift: Seventy-six Days Lost at Sea

by Steven Callahan

  I reset my lure with the remaining flying fish head. This time I’ll give it enough slack to be swallowed. The dorado soon approaches. I give a few feet of line, stalling the midget flyer. He swallows. Take it in, deeply now. I yank to set the hook. Got him! The dorado thrashes forward as if engaging afterburners, flips his head, neatly bites the line off just ahead of the wire, and is gone. I will never catch a dorado by line. I must return to the spear.

  The lure that I make from a flying fish is so convincing I’m tempted to bite it myself.

  I figure I’m about 450 miles from Antigua. Could be off 100 miles either way, maybe more. Another eighteen days. Humph. At the beginning of this voyage, eighteen days was too much to ask for. Now I demand it.

  As my equipment continues to wear out and break, and as my living corpse of a body continues to decompose, I must try harder to prepare for every eventuality. Only a few flares left. Well past the lanes. The islands still a long way off. But I’m too close now and have come through too much to let go.

  At dusk in lumpy seas I spear a female dorado. In the course of the melee, the sun sinks, and a pool of ocean flows around my knee. Somehow the spear tip has pierced the floor. It’s too small a slit to fit a plug into, so I take my knife out and increase the damage. No sweat. Its big enough now to ram a plug in, screw tight, and bind up with codline. Why, looky there, doesn’t even leak a drop, even pulls the baggy floor a little tighter. I should have done this to the other holes in the bottom, and will if the patches come off again.

  Inside the dorado is another mackerel-like fish, though smaller and more digested than the last. I can’t get the flashlight to work, so I break out one of my two Lumalights. When the light stick is bent, two chemicals mix and give off a greenish glow. Rich fare is spread out on the board before me: two livers, a sac of eggs, two kinds of meat, and a full half pint of water. I eat by green candlelight. Things are looking up.

  Showers come in the night and soak everything, but I only collect a little water. A ship heading west passes too far away to see my next-to-last parachute flare. A month ago I would have fired off three or more flares, but now I am much more realistic. I’ll wait for a ship that is in a better position to see me. I can’t afford to waste flares. Besides, I am getting very confident, perhaps too confident, that if a ship does not pick me up I will still make it to the islands. The overcast morning ruins my chances of distilling water, but I remain undaunted. Here’s a breakfast fit for King Kong: huge steaks, a quarter pound of eggs, hearts, eyes, and a scraping of fat. Yum!

  I’m in pretty warm waters now. Even if I get soaked, I’m not going to die of hypothermia overnight. Rain, at least a light shower, is becoming an almost daily occurrence. The space blanket can be risked for other purposes. I turn it into a water collection cape for the back of the canopy, rolling the edges to act like gutters. It’s wide at the top, along the canopy arch tube, and funnels to a point, which I drag through the leaky observation port. Any waves sloshing over the canopy, as well as any rain, will now pour in as if through an open faucet. However, the back of the canopy is so leaky now that water pours in from all over. The cape covers most of the aft side, which is more weathered and less waterproof than the front. It makes the back a lot drier, though rain and spray still make their way around and under the cape. The cape catches about sixty to seventy percent of the water and drains it down through the faucet, so it is much easier to catch than when it poured in at random. I can hang the Tupperware box under the tap and bail it out with my coffee can, or I can put the can directly under the tap.

  As I pick through more seaweed, a fish, too thin to be a dorado but of the same length, flits across my peripheral vision. Twice now I’ve gotten a glance of this fish. A barracuda? A shark? It’s not important. What is important is that there are new species in my world. Something is happening. I can feel it, like a scout who feels the warmth of ashes and knows how recently men sat around the campfire.

  New bird life shows its wings. In the distance, two birds fight. Perhaps they are gulls, but more likely they’re terns. One of the charts from Robertson’s book shows that the migration path of terns crosses my approximate position.

  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. I haven’t detected any of these things. The most reliable method is to see land itself. But sighting land from a distance is always a tricky problem. 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.

  I make a water collection cape from the remaining part of the space blanket (part of the blanket I used previously to make a kite). (A) I plan out the shape and poke “buttonholes” in the blanket, through which I can thread twine to tie it up and to act as anchoring points. (B) I roll the sides to act like gutters, directing most of the water down to the apex of the point to the left. In the point I tie in a piece of tubing to act as a drain. I will pull this apex and drain through the observation port on the back of the raft. I can then direct the drain into a water container. Through the buttonholes, I tie string, and each knot is fitted with a loop to which I attach lanyards that run down to the raft’s exterior handline. (C) The water collection cape is shown in position, with the point pulled through the observation port, the lanyards pulling it down and spreading it out as much as possible, and the top gutter lying along the ridge of the arch tube.

  When Chris and I were approaching the Azores, I sighted a light gray conical shape among the high, fluffy cumulus. It did not move for several hours, slowly grew more distinct, and then extended itself down. We had sighted Faial from forty miles out, while the lower parts of the island were hidden in white haze at sea level. On the other hand, I once was less than a mile from thousand-foot cliffs in the Canaries on a sunny, clear day, when the sun illuminated some haze and the whole island disappeared. I desperately hope that I have underestimated my speed and that of the current. I’ve tried to be conservative. I watch for a stable form at the horizon, one that will stay put and turn green, but each shape I see slowly transforms itself into a winged horse or angel and flies off beyond sight.

  It is the end of March. Will April showers bring May flowers, or will the first of April be a cosmic joke? Thought you’d make it, did you? Well, April fool!

  APRIL 1

  DAY 56

  Clouds drop a light shower to test my water-catchment system. I get about a pint, but upon tasting it I find that it’s still badly tainted with foul orange particles from the canopy. My catchment cape isn’t as effective as I had hoped. There’s still too much water draining down the canopy. This foul water drains through the same hole in the canopy as the clean water from the catchment cape. Maybe the foul water will be drinkable if I cut it with good water. I try a fifty-fifty ratio. It’s still so gross that it’s all I can do not to barf. Maybe if I cut it again with water from the still…

  The sun peers out from behind the wall of gray and sets the solar still to working. Dancing droplets pirouette into the collection bag. The still keeps slumping over. The hole in its skirt must be getting critically large. I have to blow it up every ten or fifteen minutes. Production seems good, too good. I try to ignore the fact that the distilled water is growing salty. I’m dreadfully thirsty. The sea itself isn’t so bad. If I mix the salty distilled water with the tainted fresh water, that should help dilute both the salt and the wretched flavor. When I get it all mixed together, I have a concoction that would be
a fitting test of manhood in any ancient tribal ritual, a mix of water, rock salt, and vomit. Get rid of it. Don’t want to pollute tomorrow’s water production, but can’t afford to throw it out. I hold my nose and swallow. The liquid slightly burns as I gulp it down.

  Off of Puerto Rico, the ship Stratus sights a small boat adrift. Stratus reports to the Coast Guard, which asks for a description of the derelict vessel. It does not fit Solo’s description. By day’s end, the Coast Guard notifies my family that the “search” for me has ended. They do not mention the Stratus. My brother Ed has been calling my parents daily to see if there has been any word from me. He is frustrated by the lack of information from official sources. Either they are not telling everything they know, or they are not conducting a very extensive search. Ed leaves his home in Hawaii and boards a plane for Boston, where he joins my parents and brother Bob. They will conduct their own search-and-rescue mission.

  In the dark, I cannot sleep. The wretched water sloshes about in my gut like a heavy stone. My head begins to ache and sweat. My neck tightens, and I feel pressure like a thumb rammed up under my jaw. Nausea sweeps over me. My pulse races, my head throbs. By midnight, steamy sweat rolls off my hot skin, and I roll back and forth in anguish. My God, I have poisoned myself.

  ROAD OF TRASH

  EACH BUBBLE AND RIPPLE has been frozen in white ice streaming down over the precipice like the long frosty beard of Old Man Winter. The motion of the torrent is stopped, awaiting the thaw of spring. Within the frigid shell, the waterfall continues to thunder downward, splashing up into my glass, which rattles with stark blue shards of ice. The sparkling, effervescent liquid is held toward my lips, but my swooning head keeps dropping back from it. I open my eyes so I do not have to look at it any more.

  Nausea strangles me. My tongue feels like a toad in my mouth. I can stand it no longer. Desperately I pull out a pint of my precious reserve, unscrew the cap, and pull on the bag. The water sits in my cheeks for a moment before I push my toady tongue upward and squirt it down my throat in an effort to douse the blaze in my belly. Another mouthful. The conflagration flickers. Another, then another. The pint bag hangs flaccid. The pyromaniac surrenders. Nausea is drowned. I sleep.

  In the morning I am weak, but I am able to catch my eleventh triggerfish and refortify myself with its fresh organs and with sticks of dorado. I am back in the battle.

  APRIL 2

  DAY 57

  Sticky gum has separated and clotted on the back of the remaining remnants of repair tape. I scrape up a small ball of gum with my knife and push a little plug of the goop through the hole in the solar still. I squish it over on both sides like a rivet. With the piece of repair tape wedged in over the gooey rivet, the replaced patch is markedly improved, gives my lungs a furlough, and keeps the blasted salt in the ocean where it belongs.

  There’s no telling how long the still will last. Buddha’s bellybutton is getting bigger. I’d better collect and store as much water as I can now. The ballast ring from the cut-up still makes two decent containers. I cut it in half and bind up one end of each half. I can easily pour water into the open ends, which are about three inches in diameter, then lash them up. If it comes to it, I’ll store tainted rainwater in these containers. The drainage tube may serve for administering a foul enema.

  (A) I cut the ballast ring from the cut-up solar still. I slice this in half so that I can easily fill it through the open mouth on one end. (B) I tightly tie up one end, but it still leaks quite a lot so (C) I twist the tail and (D) pull it back upward and securely lash it up. Amazingly it still leaks, albeit at a very slow pace. After the container is filled, I repeat the closure process on the other end and (E) hang the container horizontally from the interior handline. This keeps the ends up and prevents leakage.

  The wind is blowing us more northerly. Time to fix latitude. I lash three pencils into a triangle to make a low-budget sextant. Sextants are fancy protractors with mirrors that allow the navigator to look at the horizon and a star or planet at the same time. Early predecessors of the sextant include the cross-staff and backstaff made of wood. My instrument is even more primitive, since I cannot view both the stars and the horizon at the same time. Instead, I must move my head up and down, first viewing a star along one pencil and then the rim of the world along the other, while attempting to hold the instrument still. I will try it this evening.

  Above Antigua the West Indies begin to bend off westward. If I drift above eighteen degrees latitude, I’ll have to last another twenty or thirty days to reach the Bahamas. Guadeloupe is the most eastern island in the West Indies group. I’m aiming for seventeen degrees latitude. 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.

  Determining longitude is another matter entirely. To do so, the navigator equates arc with time. Each of the 360 degrees of the earth’s circular belt line is divided into sixty minutes of arc. Each minute is one nautical mile—6076 feet. Since the earth spins once every twenty-four hours, the heavenly bodies pass over fifteen degrees of longitude every hour, or fifteen minutes of longitude every minute. Some astronomers in Greenwich, England, began and ended their demarcation of the globe by running the longitude line of zero degrees through their little town. Longitude can be calculated by comparing the time when a heavenly body appears overhead to the time when it would be over Greenwich. The difference in time is then converted to arc, which tells the observer how far east or west of Greenwich he is. Not until the advent of accurate timepieces was it possible to fix longitude.

  Captain Cook was one of the first to utilize the breakthrough invention called the chronometer. Until then, mariners commonly sailed north or south until they reached the latitude on which their port of destination lay. Then they would sail directly east or west. Latitude sailing, as it is called, figured on the altitude of the North Star, combined with my approximate speed and drift, which I have been keeping running track of, will give me a better idea of my position in this expanse of terrain barren of signposts and landmarks.

  I measure off eighteen degrees from the chart’s compass rose and set my sextant at this angle. Go west, young Ducky, and south.

  The dorados strike hard all day, irritating my sores and infuriating me. The sky is clear again, the afternoon hot. Light winds swing to the south and push us north. Oh, hell! All night brilliant moonlight illuminates at least a hundred triggerfish and thirty escorting dorados that continually smash into Ducky. We go due north, then northeast, then east, right where we came from. Damn!

  APRIL 3

  DAY 58

  By morning we’ve completed the loop and are back on course. I’m happy that my sextant says we’re at seventeen degrees latitude, but it could be off by a degree or more. One degree the wrong way and I add a month to my trip. It’s too close for comfort. And a day lost going nowhere. I can’t expect consistent progress. Fifty-eight days, but I must be more patient and even more determined.

  Bubbles gurgle out from Ducky’s patch. I’ve got to pump every hour and a half to keep the tube tight. I tighten the tourniquet around the neck of the patch. The line struggles and then explodes, but the patch remains generally in place. I whip a noose of stronger cord around and pull it tight. Miraculously the bottom tube now holds air better than the top.

  A number of dorados nudge my butt. They’ll stick around for a while. Good time for a shot. I aim and fire. Miss. Again. Hit. A fine female. Lifted up, she glints in the sun. Her body pulses. She curls her head toward her tail—left side, right side, left, right, faster and faster. My delicate lance sways to her rhythm.

  BASIC NAVIGATION. My position east-west was estimated by my speed of drift added to th
e approximate speed and direction of the current. I made the pencil sextant to help me estimate my latitude. Upper left: The North Star, or Polaris, sits directly above the North Pole. (Magnetic north is another matter entirely.) One can see that the man standing on the pole of the globe to the lower left looks straight up at Polaris, an angle of 90 degrees to his horizontal, or horizon. The man on the equator sees the polestar right on his horizontal plane. The man in the raft at the upper right is looking at the polestar on the horizon, so he must be on the equator The man on the globe who stands between the equator and the pole looks X degrees above his horizontal to see the polestar He is then at X degrees of latitude just like the man in the raft lower down. I lash together three pencils and set two of the arms at 18 degrees, which is my estimated latitude. I use the compass rose on the chart as a protractor, since it is conveniently divided up into 360 degrees. I must first line up the horizontal pencil with the horizon. Then, while trying not to move the instrument, I drop my eye so that I can look along the elevated pencil at Polaris. If Polaris is not in line, I adjust the angles of the pencils until it is, and then measure off my latitude from the compass rose. You can see on the chart that the islands bend off westward above 18 degrees and dramatically above 19. If I drift as high as 19 degrees, my voyage will last at least four days longer than at 18. If I go as high as 19.5 degrees, the voyage will lengthen by weeks, possibly months. My track is indicated by the broken line. The current flows in the direction of the arrow, trying to sweep me north. It will be very tight.

  What a magnificent animal. In one smooth move that has become instinctive, I swing her inside and finish her off. Again I am provided with a buffer against starvation. Again I’m saddened by the loss of a companion. More and more I feel that these creatures exude a spirit that dwarfs mine. I don’t know how to explain it rationally—perhaps that’s the point. I don’t think that these fish reflect or think as we do; their intelligence is of a different kind. While I cogitate about truth and meaning, they find them in their immediate and intense connection to life—in bodysurfing down huge waves, in chasing flying fish, in fighting for life on the end of my spear. I have often thought that my instincts were the tools that allowed me to survive so that my “higher functions” could continue. Now I am finding that it is more the other way around. It is my ability to reason that keeps command and allows me to survive, and the things I am surviving for are those that I want by instinct: life, companionship, comfort, play. The dorados have all of that here, now. How I wish I could become what I eat.