In January of 1982,
Steven Callahan was attempting to sail
alone across the Atlantic Ocean in his handmade
sloop, the Napoleon Solo, prophetically named after the
resourceful American agent from the TV show The
Man From U.N.C.L.E. My name is Napoleon Solo. During a midnight
storm, something punched a massive hole in his
boat, flooding it with water and forcing him to grab what
little supplies he could and board a life raft. Callahan spent a mind-boggling
76 days stranded alone in the middle of
the Atlantic Ocean before finally being rescued. Here's the incredible
story of how he survived. But before we start, do
everyone here a favor and subscribe to the
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and lovely comments below. Steven Callahan, a boat
designer and writer, was attempting to sail across
the Atlantic Ocean on a solo trip when a whale
struck his boat. Callahan's sloop sank quickly,
and he was frantically trying to inflate his life
raft at the same time, so he had to grab what supplies
he could with almost no time to think. Imagine trying to pack
the family station wagon for a long road trip while
your house is burning down. In fact, Callahan had to dive
down into the sunken boat in order to retrieve some
crucial items, including fishing line, a water
purifier, and a spear gun. To make things worse, he
couldn't see anything. He had to locate everything
under water by memory. For food, all he managed to grab
was some peanuts and raisins, baked beans, eggs,
cabbage, corned beef, and eight ounces of water. Even with the
strictest rationing, his supplies wouldn't last
more than two and a half weeks. Callahan had to rely on
old-fashioned navigational techniques to try
and get rescued. He built a device called
a sextet, a tool that measures the distance
between the horizon and celestial objects
like stars and planets to roughly estimate
where he was and where he should steer his raft. Using the North
Star as his guide, Callahan aimed his raft
towards the West Indies. He eventually made it
to land, but the journey took much, much longer than
he initially anticipated. Nothing like taking
the old scenic route. In order to survive over two
months stranded alone at sea, Callahan split his personality
into two different characters-- the captain and the crewman. Honestly, that
makes a lot of sense considering I have to invent
two personalities just to decide if I look
fat in my new sweater. I don't, by the way. The captain would
make tough decisions and shout out orders for
the crewman to follow, which helped keep
Callahan from panicking while maintaining control
of his traumatic situation. The two didn't
always agree, though. For example, Callahan's
journals reveal that the captain and the crewmen
got into a heated argument over how to use a water ration. After so many weeks
adrift at sea, Callahan's raft
eventually became its own mobile ecosystem. A colony of barnacles began
to grow on the bottom, which attracted schools of Dorado
fish, which Callahan then caught himself to eat. The fish were such
constant features that Callahan began to think
of them as his doggies-- even grew to recognize
individual fish. But hopefully, he
didn't name any of them, as that would have made
catching and eating them a little awkward. Unfortunately, the
Dorado fish also attracted sharks who
would continuously circle Callahan's raft
as a constant reminder he wasn't the only thing out
there trying to catch food. Even though he managed
to pull a purifier out of the sinking
boat, the purifier turned out to be ineffective
at converting seawater. So he had to come up
with a different method of gathering drinkable water. Callahan rigged a system
of balloons and tarps to catch rainwater,
and while it only yielded about 20 ounces
of drinking water a day-- slightly more than a
single Dasani bottle-- it was enough to keep
him alive for 76 days. You might think one of those
loitering sharks would have eventually grown tired
of the waiting game and popped Callahan's
raft, but it was actually one of the smaller Dorado
fish that nearly sunk him. As he was fishing one
day, one of the Dorados ripped a hole in the
bottom of his raft. No matter how many times
he patched the rip, it would blow back
open every time he tried to reinflate
the boat with air. Finally, after a week
of dangerous weather and performing rushed repairs
with his arms underwater in the middle of a
closing ring of sharks, he finally fixed the raft. If you remember
the film Castaway, Tom Hanks' character was
saved by the first shipping tanker that passed by his
barely lashed-together raft. That wasn't the
case for Callahan. During his 76-day ordeal,
no less than seven ships passed within his
view, two of which were less than a mile away. Callahan desperately
tried to signal them with a flare gun and an
emergency radio beacon, but all his attempts failed. It wasn't until he ran across
some friendly fishermen off the coast of the Caribbean
island of Marie-Galante that he was finally rescued. Luckily, Callahan was able to
fight off total starvation, thanks to the fishing line
he'd managed to salvage, but he was battling
severe malnourishment during his ordeal. By the time his rescued,
Steven had lost 40 pounds, a third of his body weight. The hunger wasn't
the worst of it. The constant exposure
to the sun and seawater actually caused his skin
to slide off his body, leaving him covered
in painful open sores, and us with a solemn promise to
never complain about anything ever again, unless our skin
was simultaneously sliding off our bodies. Callahan's ordeal being
stranded for over two months alone at sea made him something
of an expert at ocean survival. So director Ang
Lee contacted him to act as an advisor
on the film Life of Pi. The film deals with the
journey of a young boy trapped on a seaborne raft
with an adult tiger. And while Callahan
praised the movie for being so realistic that
it was hard for him to watch, we can't help but
wonder whether or not he pointed out to the
filmmakers that the presence of a 300-pound tiger on the
raft would have forced him to tweak his survival tactics. After recovering from
his traumatic experience, Callahan decided to use what
he learned while being stranded at sea to develop a
design for a better life raft, which he dubbed the Clam. Callahan designed the Clam to
be a utility raft, with a canopy to both protect against
long exposure to the sun and collect rainwater
for drinking, as well as a fiberglass floor
that would be immune to tears from reckless fish. In 1986, Callahan wrote a memoir
titled Adrift: Seventy-six Days Lost at Sea, which is
a story about him being adrift for 76 days lost at sea. It detailed his
incredible struggle to survive in
unforgettable detail. The book was so popular that it
remained on the New York Times Bestseller list
for several weeks, despite ferocious competition
from the Top Gun novelization. Callahan's memoir was
adapted for television by the documentary
series I Shouldn't Be Alive, which focuses on
people who shouldn't be alive. The series retells their
stories through interviews and reenactments. Callahan's episode was called
76 Days Adrift, and aired on November 17th, 2010,
almost 29 years after he was rescued in the Caribbean. When Steven Callahan
abandoned ship alone in the middle of the
ocean, nearly everything was against him. He had almost no
food, drinking water, or any reliable
navigation equipment. But he managed to
survive for 11 weeks, thanks to his ingenuity
and determination. What do you think
of Steve's story? Leave us a comment
below and let us know what you would do if
stranded at sea for 76 days.