knoydart's Full Review: Steven Callahan - Adrift: Seventy-Six Days Lost at...
On the face of it the mere fact that the author managed to survive the physical & mental difficulty of 66 days adrift in a life raft, struggling for food & water, is quite amazing. The sheer determination to survive such long odds, the skill & invention demonstrated is truly worthy of praise. These life rafts aren't made to last that long or travel so far, yet Mr Callahan managed to make it happen in a struggle that turned into a constant battle that he could not afford to let up on for one moment.
And this is what makes my blood boil, because it was all so easily avoidable with a simple, common sense change of 1 piece of equipment. I will come to that later.
The story documents some of his background in an attempt to flesh out his character & provide a lead up to the fateful voyage. We get to see something of his nature, the way he craves the solitude of the open ocean, in fact calling his yacht "Napoleon Solo" after the Man from Uncle, but also as a way to work in the word "Solo". This ability to survive without human company proves highly useful when keeping his metal faculties sharp & focusing on survival.
The incident where Napoleon Solo sinks annoys me somewhat. I can understand as a marine architect he is well qualified but to merely assume that it struck a submerged whale occurs to me as denial as it effectively absolves him of any responsibility including his design & fabrication of the yacht from causing the shipwreck. There could after all have been any number of other causes including structural failure due to a design flaw or construction errors & even simply pushing it too hard, but by suggesting it was due to the impact of a whale all other possibilties are not explored. However this is a very personal telling of the tale & not a journalistic investigation. This does mean, however, that you must remember that the story is not impartial.
One of the most interesting aspects of the book is how survival becomes possible in the face of such difficulty. It is often said that the sea is a desert, in that there’s no food & no fresh water. But of course if you know what to do there is a way around both problems. The mainstay was, of course, fish for food & various solar stills to derive fresh water from the salt water, as well as rain water collection. The water situation was always the most difficult with & it is heart wrenching to hear of his efforts only to find that so often it was all for nothing.
It is also interesting to see how he keeps the inflatable life raft afloat & in one piece for so long, a remarkable feat of seamanship. He even manages to do what he can to steer towards areas where rescue is going to be more likely, although much of the time he was at the mercy of wind & tide.
The emotional highs & lows are cruelly charted, the prospect of imminent rescue slowly ebbing away, ships passing so close he can make out details on board yet none of them stopped. The little known fact is that off the normal shipping lanes most vessels operate on auto pilot often with no one on the bridge & if even if there was they’d be looking for large vessels, not a hard to spot life raft even if it is bright orange & shooting flares.
The use of an EPIRB radio didn’t bring help either & this is what angered me. These devices are good when used in inshore waters or where there’s plenty of shipping & air traffic, but out in the open ocean the VHF signal will only go so far as the horizon, maybe 30 miles in radius. That may sound a lot but in the vast Atlantic Ocean it is not even a pin prick. And here’s my criticism of Mr Callahan. For all his admirable traits he made a serious blunder in not having a life raft with an Emergency Radio set instead of the EPIRB. Emergency Radio sets transmit on frequencies (500 & 2182 Khz) that go much further, anywhere between 100 & 2,000 miles. There is also an automatic watch receiver on every commercial vessel as well many private & military ships. Once triggered bells rings on the bridge, master’s quarters & radio officer’s quarters. All ships in the area then work together & can locate a craft in distress by taking a bearing & triangulating. Also when ships got to the approximate area everyone would be on the bridge looking through binoculars.
I am in no doubt that if Mr Callahn had chosen a life raft with an Emergency Radio set in it he’d have been picked up within a few days at most. Even when the batteries had died he can hand crank the radio & set the automated keying device going to trigger the alarm.
So while his courage & skill at surviving is exemplary & you do cheer his eventual rescue, I personally was left shaking my head & questioning his judgment at going to sea, far off the normal shipping lanes with inadequate safety equipment. It nearly cost him his life & it would have been a long, lingering death.
The aftermath is also interesting to read about, apparently after being so mal nourished for so long he is now able to subsist on only one light meal a day, obviously something happened to his metabolism. I’m sure there’s plenty of doctors & scientists who’d love to study him!
When Callahan s small sloop sank west of the Canary Islands, he found himself adrift in the Atlantic in a five-foot raft, with only enough food and wa...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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