Adrift: Seventy-Six Days Lost at Sea by Steven Callahan

Author:Steven Callahan
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Survival After Airplane Accidents, Ecosystems & Habitats, Nature, North Atlantic Ocean, Travel, Oceans & Seas, Essays & Travelogues, Sports & Recreation, General, Napoleon Solo (Yacht), Boating, Etc, Adventure, Callahan, Steven, Shipwrecks, Special Interest
ISBN: 9780618257324
Publisher: Mariner Books
Published: 1986-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

The Tupperware box is twice as effective as a rain collector when I rig it up on top of the raft. The bridle that secures it to Ducky's stern can be quickly released. It is clipped to the box's string collar. A matching clip and bridle faces forward, out of view. The box may then be used for other purposes between rainfalls by removing it and clipping the two hooks together.

Finally I must tend to my steel knives. My Cub Scout jack-knife with the awl is one that I found when I was twelve. The spring on its main blade has always been broken, so the blade flops about a little. It's a ball of rust now. I scrape it clean. I sharpen both it and my sheath knife frequently. Rubbing the steel hard against fish skin that has a tissue of fat attached produces a tiny drool of fat, which greases the blades until they shine. 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. And now, all three are essential to my own sanity and survival.

MARCH 18

DAY 42

Each day seems longer. On my forty-second in the raft, the sea is as flat and hot as an equatorial tin roof in August. The sun in the sky is joined by hundreds that flash from water ripples. It is all I can do to try to move about in Ducky. We sit like a period in a book of blank pages.

I find that my sleeping bag helps to keep me cool as well as warm. I spread it out over the floor to dry in the sun. When I stick my legs under it, they are shaded and sandwiched between the wet bag and the cool, damp floor. It is not very good for my sores, but they are not too bad now and the relief from the heat is quite noticeable. Without the bag covering, the black floor becomes very hot and the whole inside of Ducky, which is hot enough as is, becomes an unbearable oven.

Nothing to do but wait for the wind and try to score more food. Some good fresh guts should help lift my spirits. Triggers, a school of them, flap up toward the side of the raft, then disappear under it, come up again, pirouette, dive, loop, and roll about each other in an amazing underwater ballet. They are very wary of me now and are becoming more difficult to catch than the dorados. They don't have the same sustained speed, but in quick little jerks they can dodge my spear deftly. They flirt just outside of my reach. Jab. Miss. I must two-arm a hit on a dorado, but maybe I can get a quick and penetrating one-arm shot on a trigger. Jab. Jab. Their waving fins taunt me. My arm snaps out straight; a trigger takes the spear in his belly. Inside the fish, I find

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