I Was Lost At Sea For 76 Days With Sharks Circling

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Have you ever thought about sailing the open sea alone? Would you ever want to? For many of us, it might sound fun, exciting or simply relaxing to take some time away from our day to day lives, like enjoying a nice vacation. Perhaps picturing yourself on a boat with beautiful sunshine and salty sea air is appealing to you. Either that or maybe the idea just makes you seasick. Whatever your case may be, most of us can probably agree that sailing is one thing but being stranded out in the open ocean alone is far less than ideal. Should anything like this happen to you, your chances of survival are slim. No one knows this better than a man who has experienced it firsthand. In 1981, after enduring a divorce from his wife, Steven Callahan was driven by ambition and an adventurous spirit. He decided that he wanted to sail the treacherous Atlantic Ocean in his 21-foot boat called the Napoleon Solo, a fitting name given his desire to undertake the voyage entirely by himself. At first, his trip was going smoothly. He began his long journey from Newport, Rhode Island, first sailing to Bermuda. From there, he set sail to England. He continued onward, eventually making his way to the Caribbean island of Antigua. From there, his boat suffered heavy damage from some bad weather. Luckily though, he managed to make the necessary repairs and move forward with his grand trip. He persisted on through Spain and Portugal, coming out near Madeira and the Canary Islands. It was when he departed the Canary Islands, on his way back to Antigua, when disaster struck. On January 1982, just a week after his departure, the Napoleon Solo was stricken, presumably by a whale. This caused severe damage and Callahan was forced to abandon his boat. With no time to think, he frantically prepared his lifeboat while simultaneously trying to gather as many supplies as he could. He had to dive repeatedly back into his sinking boat to retrieve vital items for survival. This was made all the more difficult considering that he couldn’t see anything while under the water and had to navigate his boat by memory. He had no choice but to locate items by feeling around for them. Imagine, for a moment, having to race against the clock to pack whatever you can for survival, knowing full well that what you choose to grab could mean the difference between life and death. Now also imagine that you are forced to do this while blindfolded. Anyone would probably feel the need to panic in this scenario. Your adrenaline would surely be pumping, your heart racing out of your chest. Yet, if you want to survive, you don’t have time to give in to trepidation. That is probably how Callahan felt during this moment of sheer crisis. In his haste, Callahan managed to procure a fishing line, a water purifier and a spear gun. For food, he gathered mostly scraps like peanuts and raisins, eggs, cabbage, corn beef, baked beans, and 8 ounces of water. With what he was able to grab, however, his supplies would only last him about two and a half weeks. From then on, he was without much of anything, 800 miles west of the Canaries, completely isolated and adrift on a raft in the middle of the open ocean. Surely, he should have been doomed by this point. He had only his wits to rely upon. With very few resources available to him, he had to develop a means to survive. He mostly fished and occasionally hunted for birds. He had no way to cook his food, however, so he had to eat everything raw. Consider that the next time you feel the need to complain about your food being overcooked. For Callahan, during this desperate time, overcooked meals would have been a luxury. Though he had grabbed a water purifier, it turned out to be ineffective at converting sea water, so he had to rig a system of balloons and tarps to catch rainwater. With this, he was only able to secure about 20 ounces of water per day, but this was just barely enough to keep him alive. Callahan was forced to revert to old-fashioned navigational techniques, creating a sexton out of pencils. A sexton is a device used to measure the horizon and celestial objects like stars and planets. He used this tool in order to roughly estimate where he was and where to steer his raft. He used the north star as his guide to aim his raft towards the West Indies, hoping to run into help along the way. After so many weeks adrift at sea, Callahan’s raft became its own miniature ecosystem. A colony of barnacles began to grow at the bottom of it, which attracted fish that he would then catch and eat. Unfortunately, these fish also attracted sharks that would continuously circle his raft. They served as a constant reminder of the dangerous situation he was in. One might presume that one of the sharks would have grown impatient and taken a bite out of Callahan’s raft to deflate it. But, no. It was actually a fish that almost sunk him. While he was fishing one day, his catch ripped a hole through the bottom of his raft. Callahan had to perform rushed repairs with his arms under the water and an encompassing circle of sharks surrounding him. Keeping his boat afloat while simultaneously trying to repair it was a full-time job. It must have been exhausting! Throughout the entirety of his ordeal, around seven ships passed within his vicinity. Two of them were less than a mile away. Callahan desperately tried to signal them, using a flare gun and emergency radio beacon to gain their attention. But his attempts ended in failure. He felt utterly helpless and became increasingly depressed. Though his raft was rated a 6-man inflatable, it still felt cramped after a while. On top of everything, he endured fierce storms, battled huge waves, and fought against extreme loneliness. With each passing day, his chances of survival were also growing more and more bleak. On the morning of his 76th day adrift, a group of fishermen spotted him just off the southeastern coast of Guadeloupe. Finally, he was rescued. By this point though, Callahan had lost 40 pounds and was covered in painful, open sores from his constant exposure to the sun and seawater. One might think that after enduring all of this, Callahan would have succumbed to post-traumatic-stress disorder and wished to remain silent on his frightening experience. But this was not the case. Callahan recounted his days at sea in his book Adrift: 76 Days Lost at Sea, which was on The New York Times best-seller list in 1986 for more than 36 weeks. His memoir was also used in the television documentary series, I Shouldn’t Be Alive, which aired on November 17th, 2010, about 29 years after he was rescued in the Caribbean. His ordeal made him somewhat of an expert on ocean survival and so he was contacted to act as an advisor for the 2012 film “Life of Pi,” which, if you don’t already know, is about a young boy trapped on a raft in the middle of the ocean with a tiger. Callahan made props for the film, including lures and other tools seen in the movie. He mentioned that the film was so realistic that he found it difficult to watch. Thankfully though, Callahan didn’t have to deal with the added threat of a tiger on top of everything else he endured during his experience. After recovering from his living nightmare at sea, Callahan also decided to use the knowledge of what he had learned to help develop a design for an improved life raft. He called his design The Clam and created it as a utility raft equipped with a canopy to shield from prolonged exposure to the sun as well as to use for collecting rainwater. He did this so that if others somehow wound up in the same, dangerous situation, they would at least have an easier time through the ordeal than he did. As an author, naval architect, inventor, and sailor, Steven Callahan is an interesting person, to say the least. With everything set against him on his 76-day venture alone at sea, he survived using his ingenuity and determination. What do you think about this story? Could you survive alone at sea for 76 days? Let us know in the comments! Also, be sure to check out our other video Can You Survive A Nuclear Winter? Thanks for watching, and, as always, don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe. See you next time!
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Channel: The Infographics Show
Views: 720,485
Rating: 4.9014268 out of 5
Keywords: shark, sea, ocean, survival, survive, stranded, Steven Callahan, 76 Days Lost at Sea, adrift, animated, lost, atlantic ocean, lost at sea, sharks circling, sharks, sharks in the ocean, educational, education, shark attack, great white shark, fishing, jaws, great white, fish, survival stories
Id: mhdat7cu5s0
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 7min 21sec (441 seconds)
Published: Thu Aug 15 2019
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