Adrift: Seventy-Six Days Lost at Sea - Softcover

Callahan, Steven

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0618257322 ISBN 13: 9780618257324

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin (Trade), 2002

When Callahan's small sloop sank west of the Canary Islands, he found himself adrift in the Atlantic in a five-foot raft, with only enough food and water for 18 days. For 76 days he drifted 1800 miles, the only man in history to survive more than a month alone at sea in an inflatable raft.

From the Author:

Alone & adrift, I came to terms with nature and my humanity.
For 2.5 months, I drifted about 2,000 miles across the Atlantic, learning to become an aquatic caveman. For many, Adrift is strictly an "adventure" survival story in which I starve and dehydrate, battle sharks and slowly adapt to the ocean wilderness in which anything that floats slowly develops an island-like ecology. While writing Adrift, I struggled to keep the pace without losing readers in sailor's jargon. However, deeper themes swim throughout the story, particularly with a school of fish that follow the raft. Although I experience a sort of living death, I am awakened to new sensitivities about my place in the universe and society, which infuses the experience with a sense of awe and wonder as much as pain and desperation. The fish, representatives of the sea's majesty and mystery, become my friends, test me and almost kill me, yet bring about my salvation. Alone, I learn to face my substantial failures, accept myself as a part of humanity, and find a balance between the rational, physical an

About the Author:

Steven Callahan is the author of Adrift, Seventy-Six Days Lost at Sea, which chronicles his life-raft drift across half the Atlantic in 1982, became an NYT Bestseller and has been translated into 15 languages. He also wrote Capsized for survivor Jim Nalepka who spent four months with four other men on an overturned, half-flooded boat. Callahan has contributed writings, illustrations, and photos to more than a dozen other books, many about seamanship or survival, and has authored hundreds of articles for the marine press worldwide. His website is www.stevencallahan.net.

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin (Trade)
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0618257322
• ISBN 13: 9780618257324
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256