Adrift: Seventy-six Days Lost at Sea Summary and Expository Essay

Steve Callahan an experienced sailor was crossing the Atlantic in his boat Solo. He at first was in a race to see who could make it from Penzance to the Canary Islands. He was in the lead for the first couple days until his boat had been struck by debris causing a leak. He went into port for a couple of weeks until Solo his boat could be fixed.

He then set sail towards the Canary Islands again encountering a week of practically calm seas. One night while lying in his bunk he heard a huge cracking sound and water started rushing into his quarters. He at first ran up to the deck to see what had happened he realized that Solo was sinking very fast. He grabbed everything that he could scavenge in the short amount of time he had. He then had to survive on his life raft out at sea.

He only had three-pounds of food and eight pints of fresh water but he did have many supplies to help him stay alive including a spear and two water distillers which one of them did not work. The first couple days were a struggle to figure out and decide how to survive out at sea with only a certain amount of items. Steve caught fish that were swimming around his raft eating the barnacles off the bottom with his spear that he hung up to dry.

The very first boat that he had spotted he shot off eight flares hoping to get the boats attention that he thought he had but the boat went right by. Over the next couple of months six other boats pass him without discovering his presence out at sea. On the forty-third day the bottom of his raft flooded due to a huge hole. Even though he was extremely tired and exhausted from his voyage he had survived thirty-three days when three fishermen found him lost at sea. Steve Callahan had lived seventy-six days out at sea in his raft that he had called Rubber Ducky.

The first point that Steve had made is that the sea was neither a friend nor foe and that even when you least expect it the sea may attack you so you should be on your guard at all times. You should always make a decision from two points of views and not just your own. If you are alone you should not just go with a decision you make but instead to think what else you could do besides that and what are the pros and cons to that decision. The last point that he made was that you should never give up even if you are down physically and mentally and that you should go to your grave trying to survive.

To survive not just physically but mentally is a challenge within itself. To be a person in that situation you should also be someone willing to look at an issue from two sides and not just one. Bad qualities would be someone who jumps to a conclusion and looks at the bad side of everything. The worst kinds of qualities are pessimistic qualities. The strong shall survive and the weak shall die.

Bibliography

CALLAHAN, STEVEN. Adrift : Seventy-six Days Lost at Sea. New York: Ballantine Books, 1996.