Welcome to I Share Hope, a project about hope. The goal of the project is to interview 1000 world leaders and hear and learn from their inspiring true stories. The subject of this week’s blog is Steven Callahan, an American. He is most famously associated with his book, “Adrift: 76 Days Lost at Sea”, the tale of his youthful misadventure of being adrift in the Atlantic in a liferaft. He was also the technical consultant for survival on the movie Life of Pi. He spent his 30th birthday in the lift raft and learned about survival.
He also states that survival is about more than just surviving, it’s about thriving. He was traveling from Penzance, the UK to Antigua when the sloop he was sailing in (one he had designed himself) sustained damage. A hole had been punctured, by what he believes was a whale, and the vessel began to take on water. He eventually abandoned the sloop for a small lift raft. He was able to gather a few survival supplies from the sloop and by the time the sea separated the two vessels, he had what enabled him to survive for 76 days and 1800 miles. Living on fish, birds, and barnacles, and only about a pint of fresh water, a day he went unnoticed despite numerous flares and the use of an emergency beacon device. His original goal was to see how he could survive with very little though he didn’t mean as little as he ended up with! To learn more about his survival and what he learned, listen to our podcast.
