Adrift: Seventy-Six Days Lost at Sea

To my mind, voyaging through wildernesses, be they full of woods or waves, is essential to the growth and maturity of the human spirit. It is in the wilderness that you really learn who you are.

This life is full of trials and tribulations, so you have to capture humor whenever and wherever you can find it.

Avoiding risk is not much of a goal...whether you crawl into a hole or walk a high wire, nobody gets out of here alive. We cannot grow without challenge.

My plight has given me a strange kind of wealth, the most important kind. I value each moment that is not spent in pain, desperation, hunger, thirst, or loneliness.

There is a magnificent intensity in life that comes when we are not in control but are only reacting, living, surviving. I am not a religious man per se...but for me, to go to sea is to get a glimpse of the face of God. At sea I am reminded of my insignificance-of all men's insignificance. It is a wonderful feeling to be so humbled.

We cannot grow without challenge. Challenges routinely produce crises that severely test us. However, crises also offer us the greatest opportunities. People going through tough times typically feel isolated, and unsure what to do. When I face a crisis, I try to keep in mind a few simple concepts: we cannot control our destinies, but we can help to shape them; we must try to make life hop a bit, but we must also accept that we can only do the best we can.

The heartfelt realization of one's insignificance yields a calming sense of being completely connected to the greater whole. As a tiny part of the world and humanity, I now feel more at peace and much larger than I ever felt as a man alone.

In addition to the little ecosystem developing around my raft, I am constantly surrounded by a display of natural wonders. The acrobatic dorados perform beneath ballets of fluffy white clouds. The clouds glide across the sky until they join at the horizon to form whirling, flaming sunsets that are slowly doused by nightfall. Then, as if the sun had suddenly crashed, thousands of glistening galaxies are flung out into deep black night. There is no bigger sky country than the sea. But I cannot enjoy the incredible beauty around me. It lies beyond my grasp, taunting me. Knowing it can be stolen from me at any time, by a Dorado or shark attack or by a deflating raft, I cannot relax and appreciate it. It is beauty surrounded by ugly fear. I write in my log that it is a view of heaven from a seat in hell.

Sometimes for better, sometimes for worse, nothing lasts forever.

To us decay is death, but to nature it is another beginning.

I discover two small holes in the floor, which explains the constant dribble of water into the raft. I probably sat on my knife when I abandoned ship. That would also explain some of the lacerations in my lower back. The patching kit contains glue and pieces of raft material. The instructions tell me to make sure the raft is dry before applying patches to it. Good joke!

I write in my log that it is a view of heaven from a seat in hell. My

Avoiding risk is not much of a goal.

Over time, though, life got complicated again and memories faded. My expectations returned, and I found the same old complaints seeping back into my daily routine. Yet always, somewhere in the back of my head, a little voice reminds me that every day is a gift, not a right. I know that to be well fed, painless, and in the company of friends and loved ones are privileges too few enjoy in this often brutal world.

Captain Cook was one of the first to utilize the breakthrough invention called the chronometer. Until then, mariners commonly sailed north or south until they reached the latitude on which their port of destination lay. Then they would sail directly east or west. Latitude sailing,

If a navigator stands on the North Pole, the North Star will sit directly overhead at ninety degrees to the horizon in all directions. The top of the world is at ninety degrees latitude. On the equator, at zero degrees latitude, Polaris dances right on the horizon. So latitude can be directly determined by the angle between the polestar and the horizon. I will try to measure the angle of the North Star to the horizon to give me my latitude. Determining longitude is another matter entirely. To do so, the navigator equates arc with time. Each of the 360 degrees of the earth's circular belt line is divided into sixty minutes of arc. Each minute is one nautical mile—6076 feet. Since the earth spins once every twenty-four hours, the heavenly bodies pass over fifteen degrees of longitude every hour, or fifteen minutes of longitude every minute. Some astronomers in Greenwich, England, began and ended their demarcation of the globe by running the longitude line of zero degrees through their little town. Longitude can be calculated by comparing the time when a heavenly body appears overhead to the time when it would be over Greenwich. The difference in time is then converted to arc, which tells the observer how far east or west of Greenwich he is. Not until the advent of accurate timepieces was it possible to fix longitude.

The dorados have awaited their chance to test me. They have destroyed my ship, disarmed me, and now they mock me. If only I were a sea creature. Fish do not get themselves into problems that they must use intellect and tools to solve. They simply swim, breed, and die. I am awed by the intricate perfection of the world in which I find myself, but I am too tired for true appreciation.

I'm getting angry. The beast comes in close. I wait for him, hatred screwing up my face. I rise as high as I can and ram the spear down with all my weight, making a dead-center hit on the lateral line that runs down the side of his head and back. This line is so sensitive it can pick up the vibrations of a struggling wounded fish over a quarter mile away. Within a second he has disappeared, shooting through the depths like a Millennium Falcon from Star Wars jumping to hyperspace.

A gray hulk with white-tipped fins slips under me. The damned water buzzard is still here, lolling about, biding his time, circling, waiting.

You should at least wear a life jacket," she scolded. "If I do go over and watch my boat sail off into the sunset," I told her, "I don't relish the idea of hanging about for several days while my flesh is slowly picked by fish, like some kind of oceanic bird feeder.

German tourists cover the beaches and buy anything with a For Sale sign.

Before this voyage, I always had what I needed—food, shelter, clothing, and companionship—yet I was often dissatisfied when I didn’t get everything I wanted, when people didn’t meet my expectations, when a goal was thwarted, or when I couldn’t acquire some material goody. My plight has given me a strange kind of wealth, the most important kind. I value each moment that is not spent in pain, desperation, hunger, thirst, or loneliness. Even here, there is richness all around me.

For the first time, I clearly see a vast difference between human needs and human wants. Before this voyage, I always had what I needed—food, shelter, clothing, and companionship—yet I was often dissatisfied when I didn’t get everything I wanted, when people didn’t meet my expectations, when a goal was thwarted, or when I couldn’t acquire some material goody. My plight has given me a strange kind of wealth, the most important kind. I value each moment that is not spent in pain, desperation, hunger, thirst, or loneliness.

If there is any enlightenment that I have been awakened to, it is that men’s minds are dominated by their little aches and pains. We want to think that we are more than that, that we control our lives with our intellect. But now, without civilization clouding the issue, I wonder to what extent intellect is controlled by instinct and culture is the result of raw gut reactions to life.

I have often thought that my instincts were the fools that allowed me to survive so that my "higher functions" could continue. Now I am finding that it is more the other way around. It is my ability to reason that keeps command and allows me to survive, and the things I am surviving for are those that I want by instinct: life, companionship, comfort, play.

Ooh ho!” he says. “In such a small boat? Tonto!” Fool. “It’s not so small, it’s my whole house.” The old man gestures toward his lower abdomen with cupped hands as if holding gigantic organs. We laugh at his joke as I shake my head no, open my eyes wide, and shiver as if frightened.