A man who set sail on a solo trip from the Canary Islands to the Caribbean was left fighting for his life on an inflatable raft for 76 days.
American sailor Steve Callahan set off on the ‘Napoleon Solo’ – a small 6.5m boat he designed and built himself – back in 1981.
Just over a week into his journey, the naval architect struck an unknown object, thought to be a shark or a whale, and his beloved boat began sinking.
As the Napoleon Solo was going under, Steve just about had enough time to grab his survival equipment, which included a six-foot life raft.
“I woke up in my bunk, water thundering over me. Judging by the level it was coming in, I knew she was sinking fast,” Steve recalled to The Guardian.
Steven Callahan survived for 76 days on an inflatable raft after his boat was taken out by a storm (Sailing Europe)
“The boat was almost completely submerged, but I held my breath and went under again and again.
“I remember the water below seemed so peaceful compared with the sea raging outside. It felt like entering a watery tomb.”
All of a sudden, Steve was alone in the middle of the Atlantic, some 800 miles to shore with limited food and drink supplies.
“I kept a log, fished with my spear gun and made water with a solar still, a contraption that took me days to get working properly, producing just over a pint a day,” he added.
“Around day 14 I saw a ship, lit a flare and thought I’d been seen – but it just went right on by.”
As he moved towards more tropical conditions, the temperatures amped up and Steve was suffering from hunger and constant thirst.
“By day 50, I’d been struggling for 10 days to keep the raft afloat with a pump after part of it ripped. I was at my lowest,” he explained.
“I broke down and gave up. But then I got scared by the thought I would be dead in a few hours; I found a way to fix the raft and it felt like the biggest victory of my life.”
Steve said he ‘couldn’t believe somebody was actually out there’ (YouTube/I Shouldn’t Be Alive)
On day 76, he was finally spotted and rescued by some fishermen near the island of Marie-Galante.
By that time, Steve had lost a third of his bodyweight, and it took him six weeks before he could start walking again.
“I couldn’t believe somebody was actually out there,” the survivor told I Shouldn’t Be Alive.
“He said something to the effect of like ‘what you doing out here man’, you know, it’s like well ‘I’m not out here you know improve my sun tan’.
“My senses were like plugged into an electric circuit somehow, they were all amplified so that every colour was like really, really vibrant, and every smell was really, really intense.
“It just was like heart-wrenching it was so beautiful to me.
“There’s nothing noble in me having survived, it’s just what I did.
“I had too much unfinished business and I think that kept me alive to a large degree.”
Steve, now 72, went on to write a book about the ordeal, called Adrift: Seventy-six Days Lost at Sea, which became a New York Times bestseller.
