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Alone and Adrift in the Pacific

On my first time out as a commercial fisherman, my boat sank, my captain died, and I was left adrift and alone in the Pacific.

I had food—a box of maybe a dozen emergency rations, which looked like beige bars of soap and tasted like oily shortbread—and two liters’ worth of drinking water, in individual packages. As my eyes would begin to close, I’d hear splashing, like the breaching of a school of big fish, and then suddenly I’d feel that the raft was being propelled forward, as if on a towline, over the surface of the water. During the day, the sun hitting the side of the raft was enough to keep me warm, but when night came, the cold set into my damp clothes and skin, and I shivered so violently, I couldn’t sleep.

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