Saturday, January 5, 2008

Adrift by Steven Callahan

Title: Adrift
Author: Steven Callahan
# pages: 344
Genre: memoir
Challenge(s): Seafaring

Setting: the middle of the Atlantic Ocean

First Sentence: It is late at night.

Cover Blurb: 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 hundred miles of ocean before he reached land and rescue.

Random Thoughts: My husband and I love to sail. This book has been on our bookshelves for years, but I’ve never gotten around to reading it for some reason. Around the 50th day or so, the story gets a little tedious (I’m sure Callahan felt that way too!). But, overall, it’s an amazing story of survival. I’m not sure I would have made it past the first week (if I even managed to get into the life raft to begin with, that is)!

Favorite quote: In no time he is spinning yarns big enough to knit the world a sweater.

Rating: B

3 comments:

Jill said...

This sounds like an interesting book but I can see how it got tedious afterwhile. I felt like that a little bit while reading "Life of Pi."

Jill
http://mrstreme.livejournal.com

Unknown said...

is this book non - fiction and adventure combined together?

Kristi said...

Winny - Yes. This book is non-fiction. It is the true story of a man who spent 76 days in a life raft in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean after his sailboat sank.