This Man Survived Over 2 Months Lost At Sea | 76 Days Adrift | I Shouldn't Be Alive S4 EP6 | Wonder

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you when Steve callaghan's boat sinks in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean he's stranded in a tiny life raft thousands of miles she learned you're gonna die all alone in the middle of the ocean but no hope anymore grown incredible 76 days he paddlers the sea whether it's shark means fear not I'm done extreme hunger your body starts eating its own muscle and his own mind psychologically mentally I was just done in an epic fight to stay alive I just felt like I was totally doomed [Music] twenty-nine-year-old Bostonian Steve Callahan is halfway through the same trip of a lifetime I remember the first time I went out sailing I loved the immediacy of it you can go off and have an adventure he's already sailed from the USA to the Canary Islands and is now heading off from the three and a half thousand mile return leg back across the Atlantic to the Caribbean I figured on the very outside it would be a month to get to the Caribbean but I'd probably make it a few weeks for Steve the trip is an adventure the note so a means of escape my life wasn't a bit of a shambles my marriage had gone south and we had split up there I was ready for a new stage in my life [Music] Steve is hoping that isolation on the open seas in his self-built boat will help him leave a difficult year behind I was really on my own out there which was fine I didn't need people I didn't really need the society so much I pictured myself more as like a sea creature in Steve's first we could see weather conditions could hardly be better [Music] when I left the Canary Islands for a week I had just the most idyllic sail everything was just beautiful and I'd listen to my radio and play the boat like a drum do my exercise I had this whole exercise routine on the boat it just felt completely at home there [Music] but 800 miles than one week out into the Mid Atlantic the weather begins to change the weather just started turning dirty always probably blowing 35 or so knots and the waves started growing for an experienced sailor like Steve it's nothing out of the ordinary I'd seen a lot worse weather before and so I figured well it'll probably be a day or two and this is goodbye I wasn't worried everything was fine as night falls and the rough weather continues Steve switches on the autopilot and beds down for the night people think that sailing is a very quiet undertaking it's not big waves are slamming against the side of the boat you get this quite jerky motion but I was still able to kind of lie down and I was kind of half asleep all of a sudden there was this big bang on the side of the boat there was just this huge flood of water immediately steve has no idea what he's hit but the boats hull has been torn apart the water was rising very very quickly within seconds the water is above his head I just thought this boat is gonna be under law I'm going right to the bottom Steve's boat is sinking he knows he has seconds to get to the life raft up on deck so I yank on the line and if the line keeps coming out you know nothing nothing up nothing this didn't work at all finally boom it pops open Steve makes it to safety but just as he's about to cut himself loose a terrifying thought hits him with the equipment that's in the raft I will not last very long at all everything he needs to have any chance of survival is stowed deep inside the flooded boat it was essential that I go back on the boat and dive down and get equipment [Music] even though I realized that the boat could slip under the ways at any moment against every instinct he knows he has no option but to dive back down into the sinking boat so it's all dark in there so I couldn't really see anything I could feel the ditch kid it was tied down I started cutting away Steve frees his emergency supply kit but just as he makes it to the exit hatch the hatch slammed closed the boats covered with water I'm going down I thought that was it if I don't get out of here right now I am going to die there's a hundred percent certainty of that but just as Steve's lungs are about to burst a huge wave breaks across the boat all of a sudden there's air it was a huge huge relief with only seconds to spare Steve escapes clutching his vital emergency supplies I jumped into the raft and I saw that I was drifting away from the boat Steve can only watch as he drifts away from not just his boat but also his dream [Music] I went drifting off into the middle of the Atlantic Ocean it just was kind of devastating [Music] that first night in blueheart really cold and really wet and really scary I was shivering a lot and I was worried about dying of hypothermia I might not make it till the morning [Music] dawn breaks to reveal the true horror of Steve's situation his boat is gone and he is alone in the middle of the Atlantic I'm a long way away from anybody and I'm in a very empty part of the ocean as well I am just this teeny teeny little thing surrounded by this immensity of sea it was kind of overpowering steve has no means of communication but knows that no one will be looking for him I told people at home I gave him five or six weeks after I left the Canary Islands is being you know don't worry about me if I don't show up this time Steve calculates he's a thousand miles from land and completely at the mercy of wind and currents as they push him further westwards out into the ocean I was in a place where there was basically no shipping and I really needed to get to the shipping lanes to have any chance of being picked up at all Steve estimates that the shipping lanes are 350 miles further west but even if the winds still push him in the same direction it will take him at least two weeks to get there and he only has a tiny supply the emergency drinking water I was worried I had eight pints of water which theoretically was good enough for maybe eight days without enough water he has almost no chance of making the shipping lanes alive it's a great irony at the world's biggest desert actually is the ocean you can't drink any of the water there there's no shade and my chances of survival were almost hopeless along with a harpoon and a few other supplies he rescued from his boat Steve discovers three emergency water purification kits known as solar stills the solar stills that I had were created during the Second World War for downed pilots I never knew anybody who'd actually used them before I've had eight pints of water it's over two weeks before I reached the shipping lines so the solar stills were absolutely critical to any long-term survival Steve fills the still with seawater knowing that the heat of the Sun should separate the salt from the water might have aa half-hour I've got a whole bag of water I kept trying them again and again and again Steve cannot figure out how the solar stills work its seawater uses just seawater just didn't work at all and now he faces his first full night adrift in the ocean I was desperately lonesome and there was no part of this that was not kind of a hellish experience Steve knows that it's essential he solves his drinking water problem and the storm gives him an idea I knew that most survivors had relied on collecting rainwater if Steve can use the rafts canopy to collect rainwater he may have hit upon an answer [Music] it was pretty much like drinking somebody's vom and it was just so awful it was undrinkable the orange pigment from the canopy contaminates the water I decided now I'm never gonna drink the water off the canopy it was just too dangerous Steve's quest to find solace out at sea has resulted in horrific isolation and he can see no way out of his ordeal I wrote my own epitaph that day my name is Steven Callahan and I was shipwrecked approximately this position I am drifting in a six-man raft I'm doomed I really I just felt like I was totally doomed the currents are pushing Steve westwards towards the shipping lanes his only chance of rescue but he's over two weeks away with only enough water to last him a few days it wasn't gonna keep me alive very long you know I'm taking a little sip every now and then hardly even swallowing it really it's just being more absorbed I'm getting really thirsty Steve X out his supplies for a whole week but knows his only hope of the solar stills but first he must understand what he's doing wrong it was critical to figure out how to use these things just like go back to square one and try to figure out how does this thing actually work it's a drastic step but he decides to rip one of his three precious stills apart in the hope that he can work out how to make them produce fresh water all right and I finally dawn and me it had to be inflated just the right amount Oh [Music] they get the solar still to produce I'm talking a spoonful of fresh water was like the hugest high I could possibly have Steve now has a tiny supply of water but after seven days at sea he faces yet another problem he's run out of food I was really hungry just like really struck me how desperate I had become there's no way I'm gonna live out here but just as Steve is beginning to think that the ocean is the raft of life [Music] immediately my heart kind of jumped in my throat there fish here I knew right away that if I'm fishing with a spear in an inflated raft I'm taking a big chance here [Music] I kept trying and nothing would work I just couldn't spear one it was very frustrating Steve spends the whole day trying to catch fish but just as he thinks he may finally succeed the firing mechanism on his speargun brakes now I don't have a range of 6 feet possibly I have a range of about 18 inches now it really hungry and just really struck me how desperate I had become at that point for days Steve continues to try and catch fish but to no avail [Music] and a physical sense it was incredibly depressing in terms of what I'd felt like I had done with my life it was depressing it was the most hellish time in my life bol steve's attempts to catch fish have failed but if he gives up he'll die of starvation I knew that this was not going to be easy the fish has got to be right under the spiritum [Music] [Music] by day 14 I've caught my first fish and I've produced water so now as long as the raft stays in one piece and I keep my act together I might be able to live out here indefinitely for the first time in 14 days Steve has a sense of hope but the vast and deadly ocean is not about to let him rest all of a sudden flop hop hop hop flop gets the bottom of the raft in the middle of the night it looks like what's going on boom the whole rafts and lifted up you know just punched off the surface of the of the ocean whoa what the hell was that a massive shark is attacking Steve's life raft it was going to rip apart the raft and then I'd be left in the water and forget it whether the shark eats me or not I'm done I was so freaked out about it I thought for sure that was gonna be hit by was being attacked this thing was really whacking away at the raft we finally hit it a few times with a spear and then it went away there's a ship right there on the horizon right in front of me and I thought ah this is it after 15 days lost at sea steve has finally drifted into the shipping lanes his perfect conditions you know it's fairly calm out completely black night perfect for flares [Music] it looks like the ships coming for me it keeps steaming towards me and steaming towards me and I was convinced that it had seen me and it was close enough I could smell the diesel in the air to steve's utter elation rescue has come at last chairs and then just goes through right by me and they're rocking and it's weight after it went behind I was most disappointed in myself because I knew that that was probably going to be the case with the ship it's really really hard to see something at sea even if you know it's there and you're looking for it so if you're not looking for it it's really hard to be seen Stevie's once again left alone in the ocean but at least now he has the real hope of being spotted by passing ships all the way around the clock I would just give a really careful look all the way around the horizon [Music] every morning was a bit of hope and then every afternoon it was like the depths of fatigue and despair [Music] over the next 10 days Steve spots only a handful of ships they all sail by I've seen ships I've signaled them nobody stops and picks me out Steve slowly begins to realize that the shipping lanes are just as empty as the rest of the ocean having that whole fantasy blown to hell basically was definitively the hugest down after a month at sea Steve has drifted right through the shipping lanes unnoticed and back home nobody even knows he's missing so Paul with emotions now the first time I cried it was like this is the state of my life what are you doing out here my life just seemed completely and utterly as open in empty as the ocean steve has drifted an epic 700 miles but now faces a devastating new reality his next chance in rescue won't come until he reaches the Caribbean another thousand miles away first I never thought I'd even reached the shipping lanes so thinking about getting all the way to the islands which was you know way beyond the shipping lanes was not even conceivable to me but if Steve is going to survive he knows there's no time for self-pity [Music] I was discovering on it sold way more resilient than I ever thought I could be I'm on my own nobody's gonna pick me up I've got to reach the islands now count on yourself count on keeping your boat together and keep your act together and continuing your voyage steve is still averaging 25 miles a day but checking his charts again a terrible thought dawns on him if he drifts any further north he'll miss the Caribbean completely and be swept back into the mid-atlantic I would have been a min voyage of indeterminate length years possible I be a total disaster but conditions aboard the raft are also placing Steve survival in serious doubt the environment was just incredibly horrible I could never stretch out straight in the raft so I lie down kind of curled on my side getting cramps in my legs so I could sleep about an hour at a time I started developing all these little saltwater sores and you're sitting in a salt encrusted environment so you having literally salt rubbed into the wounds 24/7 Steve now drifts into tropical waters and it's getting hotter his body is desperate for more water than the two remaining solar stills can produce the dehydration is just agonizing dying to get a drop where you know I'm looking at the solar still and watching these drops come down and a spoonful of water you know if somebody come along and said well you got a choice you could have this cup of water in but we have to take your hand for it which do you want I probably honestly I'd probably say take the hand Steve is also increasingly ravaged with hunger I was starving all the time and your body starts eating its own muscle as a result I was getting skinnier and more desperate there's this great emptiness that can never be filled up [Music] I speared the stray doe but just as he thinks he's landed a fish and went right through it and the Dorito just busted the end of the spear off and the Dorito just rolled over and ran along the bottom tubes it was just like one of these oh my god moments there was a horrible sound there's just like these bubbles coming out the thing just deflated really really quickly the impaled fish has punctured the life raft Steve is now sinking into the ocean and I knew I was in serious serious trouble pretty short order the whole bottom tube was completely deflated they've ripped a hole about that long in the tube I thought that I could go indefinitely as long as the raft was in one piece and now the raft doesn't have one piece anymore maybe this is going to be the end of the line with the crucial bottom ring of his raft damaged it is now too unstable for Steve to fish or collect water it was like I was walking and rubber quicksand plus it's not really drifting very fast with a win so I'm not gonna make it if I don't find a solution I kept getting a repair on the air I've found stuff around a really tight and I'd pump it up I kept doing it again and again and again for days it's really very depressing because I I just didn't think that I could fix it Steve knows the clincher Draft is a disaster he's going slower wasting precious calories pumping it up a now face is an even bigger problem I started consuming both water and the fish that was hanging to dry I was unable to renew that stock while the bottom was deflated I imagine it wouldn't have been a whole lot longer before I would have died for ten days Steve exhausts himself trying to keep the raft inflated but fails after battling to stay alive for so long it's the final straw I always absolutely that was it I gave up I just lay down I was like I just totally broke down [Music] you're gonna die all alone in the middle of the ocean you've never done anything successful in your life I only had failed marriage failed relationships but never really given enough of myself to anybody I just wasted a life starving thirsty and without hope Steve feels that death is now a certainty and then I got scared this is very real and you're gonna be dead in the amount of hours if you don't snap out of it yeah get yourself together in a final act of desperation Steve searches for anything that might save his life you know just something happened and just click then I go oh yeah the fork Steve hopes that our form might just be strong enough to secure a patch to the raft [Music] [Music] I couldn't jump around and jump for joy or anything but that was just like the the hugest victory of my life but Steve's elation is short-lived his supplies of virtually vanished he still hundreds of miles from land but his body is desperately weak well yeah I got out of that but now what I'm still doomed [Music] there's a day off your life there's another day off your life I just I really didn't think I was gonna make it really was a period of just hanging on oh my god this is such marginal life looking at my watch and thinking that minutes have passed looking at it again and being like thirty seconds it passes like it just seemed it'll drag on a really long time [Music] [Music] after 66 days alone Steve's final lifeline is gone his solar stills have reached the end of their working life the cloth on the bottom is rotted out it's going to be totally useless there's no way to repair it his only means of producing drinking water is now gone I just figured this really is it you know I've no hope anymore it was ending [Music] Steve now only has three cans of emergency water left and his body's toxic salt levels are pushing his sanity to the limits the physical part of me he's gone whoo there's water over there let's go snag that but there was our overbearing rational part of me that was gone no no no no I don't care unless you know you are dying you're you're you're not getting into that right yet this is a view of heaven from a seat in hell alone on the ocean for over 70 days Steve's body and mind are now shutting down his only hope is to reach land expectancy the islands like days and days before now [Music] I'm sure I should be reaching the islands I should be reaching I should be seeing some sign or reaching the islands [Applause] but then Steve has a shocking realization if he's miscalculated his position currents will sweep him back into mid-ocean and certain doom maybe I'm Way north of the islands next stop England you know eight months from now so that that was tough I was very worried that I had screwed up and I wasn't gonna make it I just don't know anymore [Music] [Applause] [Music] maybe I'm dead I've never been dead before maybe this is what it's like and this is what I deserve for my shabby life and maybe I'm just gonna be floating around out here forever I felt all the hopelessness that people who'd been adrift at sea before and never came back and nobody ever knew what happened to them and here I was amongst them and I could kind of feel them all around me it just was a horribly desperate feeling [Music] it was over I was just done I had no more no more to give [Music] [Music] all of a sudden it was like all kinds of crates and bottles and plastic to me that was the first definitive sign that I was coming into changes I'm gonna see something [Music] the Sun Rose was like there's an island in front of me I couldn't have been more than ten miles out [Music] to see the green of the island was like ah such a I was intense [Music] [Music] [Music] but to his horror Steve realizes that the island is an impregnable fortress of vertical cliffs and razor-sharp coral reefs oh my god I've come all this way and there's no way I can make a landing after enduring so much for so long Steve conflict salvation slipped away from him at the final hurdle this voyage is ending today no question about it one way or the other this is this is gonna come to an end [Music] wow that's great somebody's actually I couldn't believe somebody was actually out there on the morning of his 76th day of drift steve is spotted by some local fishermen he said something the effect of like what you doing out here mom you know that's like I'm not out here you know improve my suntan [Music] my senses were like plugged into an electric circuit somehow they were all amplified so that every color was like really really vibrant and every smell was really really intense it just was like heart-wrenching it was so beautiful to me having endured 76 days in his tiny raft Steve's leg muscles of atrophied and he weighs just 100 pounds after six weeks in the hospital Steve is reunited with the parents he thought he'd never see again the small island of Mary gallant where he's found is just 60 miles south of his original destination Antigua there's nothing Noble in me having survived it's just what I did I had too much unfinished business but I think that kept me alive to a large degree [Music]

Info

Channel: Wonder

Views: 11,693,526

Rating: 4.8608236 out of 5

Keywords: wonder, i shouldn't be alive, i shouldn't be alive full episodes, wonder i shouldn't be alive, i shouldn't be alive 76 days adrift, 76 days adrift, i shouldn't be alive an epic fight to stay alive, lost at sea, lost at sea for over 2 months, i shouldn't be alive s4 ep6, wonder 76 days adrift, an epic stay alive wonder, survival videos, lost at sea story, true survival stories, survivors tell their story, wonder survival videos

Id: xym5KUJrvsY

Channel Id: undefined

Length: 48min 9sec (2889 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 18 2018

Reddit Comments

Long but worth the watch

👍︎︎ 6 👤︎︎ u/Carstoned 📅︎︎ May 19 2019 🗫︎ replies

I dont get the fork save.

👍︎︎ 2 👤︎︎ u/BallForce1 📅︎︎ May 19 2019 🗫︎ replies

Interesting story, terrible melodramatic docu.

👍︎︎ 2 👤︎︎ u/rddman 📅︎︎ May 19 2019 🗫︎ replies

Nightmare fuel.

👍︎︎ 1 👤︎︎ u/sotoh333 📅︎︎ May 19 2019 🗫︎ replies

I choose death.

👍︎︎ 1 👤︎︎ u/31TonBallZack 📅︎︎ May 19 2019 🗫︎ replies

Anyone else think this is almost too unbelievable to be true? Of course he gets attacked by a shark, but scares it off with a few hits of the spear.

👍︎︎ 1 👤︎︎ u/OldHobbitsDieHard 📅︎︎ May 19 2019 🗫︎ replies