Adrift: Seventy-six Days Lost at Sea » (Reprint)

A naval architect ny training, Steven Callahan runs S. P. Callahan & Associates, which provides services to the boat-building and marine safety industries.

On the night of January 29, 1982, Steven Callahan set sail in his small sloop from the Canary Islands bound for the Caribbean. Thus began one of the great sea adventures of all time. Six days out, the sloop sank, and Callahan found himself adrift in the Atlantic in a five-and-a-half-foot inflatable raft with only three pounds of food and eight pints of water. He would drift for seventy-six days over eighteen huyndred miles of ocean before he reached land and rescue. New introduction by Edward E. Leslie New Epilogue by Steven Callahan

Library Journal

Callahan, a marine architect, lost his boat in a storm off the Canary Islands while engaged in a singlehanded race across the Atlantic in 1981. Luckily, he carried far more than the basic emergency equipment required, e.g., a six-person raft. Before sinking he was able to recover his emergency equipment bag and his life raft. Callahan admits to having read the survival accounts of Maurice and Maralyn Bailey ( Staying Alive , 1974) and Dougal Robertson ( Survive the Savage Sea , 1973) and even had the latter's manual Sea Survival (1975) with him in the raft. What makes his story different was his lack of a companion. Through his own ingenuity he learned how to spear fish, fix his solar still, and even repair his holed raft. This is a real human drama that delves deeply into a man's survival instincts. It should be read by anyone venturing offshore in a small boat. John Kenny, San Francisco P.L.