Editor’s Note:  This article is in need of editing.

Adrift: Seventy-six Days Lost at Sea

Written by Steven Callahan

Copyrighted and First Printing in ???

Total of 344 Pages

I first read this book in high school during reading lab.  I was hooked.  For certain reasons, I did not read this book again until years later.  I finally bought my own copy when I was living in Denver.

This book is about the survival of a lone sailor who lost his ship in a storm and spent 76 days “lost at sea.”  The term, lost at sea, is a powerful term for those whose lives is tied to the sea.  I spent one summer living aboard a ship in the Glacier Bay region of Alaska and loved it despite the dangers involved.  It truly made me appreciate the life aboard a ship at sea.  This was not a day cruise type of ship. We ate, breathed, lived, and worked on the ship 24 hours a day, 7 days a week all summer. (Check out my Alaska Travel section about my summer.)

I will not spoil this book because you need to read it to appreciate it.  I will include my favorite passage in this book.  I truly identify with this passage and forever worship Steven Callahan as a writer because of this passage.

The freedom of the sea lures men, yet freedom does not come free.  Its cost is the loss of the security of life on land.  When a storm is brewing, the sailor cannot simply park his ship and walk away from it.  He cannot hide within stone walls until the whole thing blows over.  There is no freedom from nature, the power that binds even the dead together.  Sailors are exposed to nature’s beauty and her ugliness more intensely than most men ashore.  I have chosen the sailor’s life to escape society’s restrictions and I have sacrificed its protection.  I have chosen freedom and have paid the price.

This is a TRUE STORY.  Steven Callahan, the author of the book, is the man who survived 76 days lost at sea.  To put this in perspective, that is 2 months, 2 weeks, and 1 day.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who really wants to appreciate the intensity I approach life with.