The Offshore Triumphs Of Karla Jean by Dorothy Hagan

Author:Dorothy Hagan [Hagan, Dorothy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781469700427
Publisher: iUniverse
Published: 2012-01-11T00:00:00+00:00

Not long after her relief at being alive, her victory at being able to stand, and her renewed faith that she would likely see her family again, Karla realized she was really hungry, and extremely thirsty.

She wasn’t sure how many days she had been missing. She surveyed her arms and skin; they looked water soaked and pale, but only slightly thinner. She slowly walked around the top of that platform, sadly realizing she managed to get on one that was quite small and almost completely unequipped. She continued looking for anything that might aide in her survival. She didn’t find much: some lengths of rope, a bit of tangled netting, a fairly large swath of tarp material and somebody’s discarded hardhat. She picked it up and laughed out loud at her good fortune. For beneath it she beheld an absolute gift from God. To her astonishment, under that hardhat, she found a half dozen unopened little peanut packets from Southwest Airlines. Honest to God. What luck! Karla smiled. She loved Southwest Airlines. She had flown them from Houston to New Orleans dozens of times for different offshore assignments. In twenty-six years they never let her down. Not even now. She promised herself she would write the good folks at Southwest a nice letter if she lived long enough to extend the courtesy.

Karla put the peanut packets into her pocket. She took her hands and wiped out the inside of the hard hat. If she got lucky and it rained, she could catch some water in the bowl of the hat. She decided to ration the nuts very sparingly since she had no idea how long they would have to sustain her. So she went for the rest of that day without food or water.

In the meantime she had an idea. She figured if she had to, she could see what she could catch. And the hungrier she became the better that bad idea sounded.

It was time to go fishing. This meant she was going to have to climb back down that ladder again, but so be it. She had nothing but herself to lure a fish with, so she got down in the water to see what might swim up. She still had a T-shirt on under her coveralls so she took that, attached it to the netting she found, and fashioned a simple net. She dropped it down in the water, over and over again, coming up empty every time. Finally she caught some really small fish. She ate the first two or three and used the remaining ones for bait. On about her fifteenth try she got a fish about eight inches long. Her old toughness came back as she tore its head off with her long, strong fingers. She rinsed off the blood and ooze and forced down some raw fish meat. She vomited most of it back up, and then ate some more.

The next several days were spent in survival mode. She ate only when absolutely necessary.

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