The clarity of a castaway
Steven Callahan, an accomplished British sailor, was on a solo voyage in 1982 when his boat was suddenly damaged by a whale in the middle of the Atlantic. As the water rushed into his sinking vessel, a voice inside his head screamed, “You’re gonna die! You’re gonna die! You’re going down with the boat!”
But another voice kept repeating, “Keep calm and do your job.”
Time slowed down as he went through a mental checklist of anything that might help him survive. He grabbed a spear gun, a navigation chart, a few scraps of food, a container to distill rain water, and a flare. Then he was forced to cast himself adrift on a small rubber raft, the closest land mass some 1,800 miles away. He knew he would be alone for God knows how long.
Callahan began to live as an aquatic caveman, eating raw birds and fish. He calculated he could consume no more than half a pint of rain water each day, which meant a single mouthful every 6 hours.
Sharks were soon encircling him. The waves relentlessly rocked his tiny vessel. He shivered from the cold and was in constant pain as seawater aggravated the sores on this skin.
He had lost over a third of his body weight when he was finally spotted by a fishing boat off the coast of Guadaloupe after 76 days.
According to Callahan, three things sustained him over this brutal ordeal:
1) Discipline: He remained highly focused on the controllables. In fact, he was so disciplined about his hydration schedule that they discovered him with five remaining pints of water.
2) Gratitude: Every day he found reasons to be thankful, however small. He was glad to have had the foresight to upgrade to a larger life raft. He reminded himself he was doing everything possible to survive. He took solace in the possibility that his journal might eventually be of service to other sailors.
3) Aspiration: There was another thing he had taken from his sinking boat: Dougal Robertson’s memoir, Sea Survival. Robertson had kept himself and his family alive at sea for over five weeks after they had been shipwrecked a decade earlier. This book became enormously valuable for its practical guidance. Even more so, for the emotional nourishment of a living role model.
Reflecting on his remarkable experience, Callahan recalls a core sentiment that kept him going: “I tried to look at the voyage as a continuation, not the end, of an old voyage.”
I can’t help but feel there’s gold in that story for many of us who may be on rafts of our own in these challenging times.