In 1981, American sailor Steve Callahan set off on a solo voyage from the Canary Islands to the Caribbean, only to find himself fighting for survival on an inflatable raft for 76 days. Callahan had designed and built his own small 6.5-meter boat, the Napoleon Solo. Just over a week into his journey, disaster struck when his vessel collided with what was believed to be a whale or shark, causing it to sink.
As the boat began to go under, Steve grabbed his survival gear, including a six-foot life raft. “I woke up in my bunk with water pouring over me. The boat was sinking fast,” he told The Guardian. Despite the dire situation, he repeatedly dived back into the submerged boat to retrieve more supplies. “The water below felt so peaceful compared to the chaos above—it was like entering a watery tomb,” he recalled.
Adrift in the middle of the Atlantic, about 800 miles from land, Callahan had only limited food and water. “I kept a log, fished with a spear gun, and used a solar still to produce just over a pint of water each day,” he explained. “On day 14, I saw a ship and signaled with a flare, but it passed without stopping.”
As he drifted through increasingly tropical climates, he faced unbearable heat, starvation, and relentless thirst. “By day 50, the raft was partially torn, and I’d been struggling to keep it afloat with a pump for 10 days. I was at my lowest,” he admitted. “I broke down and gave up, but the fear of dying pushed me to fix the raft—it felt like my greatest victory.”
Finally, on day 76, fishermen near the island of Marie-Galante spotted and rescued him. By then, Steve had lost a third of his body weight, and it took him six weeks to regain the ability to walk. “I couldn’t believe someone had found me,” he recalled on I Shouldn’t Be Alive. “When they asked me what I was doing out there, I thought, ‘I’m not working on my tan!’”
The experience left his senses heightened, with colors more vibrant and smells more intense. “It was heart-wrenching and beautiful,” he said. “I don’t see survival as noble—it’s just what I did. I had too much unfinished business to let go.”
Steve, now 72, chronicled his ordeal in his book Adrift: Seventy-six Days Lost at Sea, which became a New York Times bestseller.