Will to Live: Dispatches from the Edge of Survival (13 page)

As the days went on, the group entertained itself as best it could, with games like Twenty Questions and I Spy. The raft was losing air more rapidly than ever, and they had to dedicate more time to blowing it up. Food was scarce, and they were clearly losing weight, though the occasional gift of the flying fish helped bolster their meager food stores.

On day six, they received a far more generous gift from the sea. The family awoke to a tremendous noise coming from the
Ednamair,
and when they pulled the dinghy over, they were amazed to see a thirty-five-pound dorado flapping in the bottom. The fish would frequently leap out of the water in pursuit of flying fish; this one apparently miscalculated its flight path. It was a stroke of sheer luck, but when you’re floating on a life raft in the middle of the South Pacific, luck may well be the most important of the four additive elements necessary for survival.

Worried that the madly flopping fish would propel itself back into the sea, Dougal leapt into the dinghy, grabbed the fish, and rammed a knife into its head, sawing furiously. When he had decapitated it, he cut the tail off for good measure.

After Dougal had cleaned and gutted the fish, the Robertsons enjoyed more food than they had had in one sitting since the sinking of the
Lucette.
They ate fish flavored with lemon juice and onion, along with a concoction of dorado liver and heart and small pieces of yet another flying fish that had landed in the dinghy overnight. When they had eaten their fill, Lyn was wise enough to split open the dorado vertebrae. They found the spinal cavity to be full of fresh, nutritious water.

It’s amazing that, after what otherwise would be considered a very small meal—the Robertsons were diligent about rationing—most felt quite full. In fact, Dougal was surprised that he was not crippled by hunger pains. I don’t find it all that surprising, though. Too often, those of us in Western society figure we are starving if we go about three hours without food. True hunger pain takes much longer to kick in, especially when the adrenaline of a survival experience is involved. I don’t really get hunger problems until day four of my survival experiences, and sometimes not even for a week.

Encouraged by the bounty of the dorado, Dougal continued his fishing attempts. He started with the large hooks, baiting them with the heads of the flying fish or guts from the dorado. But Dougal was thinking too big by going after dorado from the get-go. He would have been much better off fashioning a very tiny hook and catching the numerous small fish that also swam around the raft rather than trying so hard for big ones. Small fish are not only easier to catch, they’re much safer, too. Large fish are powerful creatures, and many unsuspecting fisherman have been injured by their wildly flapping bodies. Their sharp teeth can rip a hole in a rubber raft. Catching, cleaning, and eating small fish would kill much more time, which not only offers a psychological benefit, but would give the kids the chance to try, too. Going for the big fish is not really survival thinking, it’s recreational thinking.

The seventh day on the raft was a momentous one, in several ways. The day began with an outburst of rain. Soon, the water running down the pipe from the catchment area on the roof was clear, and everyone drank until they were bursting. They also filled up as many spare jars, cans, and plastic bags as they could. With such an increase in their water supply, spirits were high.

They soared to even greater heights later that day, when Douglas cried out that he had seen a ship. Everyone crowded to the door of the raft, and sure enough, a huge cargo vessel was approaching on a course that Dougal estimated would bring them within three miles of one another. Although three miles is a long way to see a flare during the day, they were encouraged that gray skies would help their cause. Dougal climbed into the dinghy and set off one of the rocket flares. Thankfully, it fired, cutting a long, pink arc in the sky. They were about to be rescued! When the ship didn’t change its course in the direction of the raft, Dougal lit a hand flare, waving it high over his head until the heat made it unbearable. Still, the ship did not alter course. He struck another hand flare and waved it frantically, to no avail.

With the eager faces of his family and Robin glancing back and forth from Dougal to the ship, he struggled to make a decision. Realizing that such a chance might never come again, he knew what he had to do. He would use their last rocket flare and one more hand flare, which he did. Still the ship did not turn. They had not been seen.

I don’t disagree with Dougal using most of their flares. Indeed, it might have been weeks—or months—before they were seen again by a passing ship. What surprises me is that they didn’t seem to have planned for what they would do in that event. In desperation, Lyn urged Dougal to set fire to the sail in a last-ditch effort to be seen. It was an irrational, and potentially disastrous, suggestion. Sure, it
might have
increased their chance of being rescued, but given the lack of response to the five flares they set off, chances were still slim. And without a sail, getting to the Doldrums alive would have been nearly impossible.

In those desperate moments as the ship sailed away, something snapped in Dougal. But it wasn’t what you might think. With the prospect of rescue looking less and less like a reality—when would they have another chance like that?—Dougal did not sink into depression or self-pity. Quite the opposite. With all hope seemingly lost, Dougal decided that he would no longer think of rescue as a viable outcome. From now on, their survival was their own responsibility. They would make it to safety under their own power and by the strength of their collective ingenuity. Dougal vowed not to use the words
rescue
or
help
anymore, a surprisingly common occurrence in survival situations, particularly when it becomes obvious that the rescue you have hoped for is not going to come. The same thing happened to Nando Parrado and some of the more steel-hearted of his teammates after their plane crashed high in the Andes and they learned via transistor radio that the search had been called off.

It is, without a doubt, this kind of thinking that will enable someone to survive. As Dougal so rightly said, it was no longer a question of
if
they made it to land, but
when.

Later that afternoon, they were disturbed by an unusually hard bump on the bottom of the raft. They had become accustomed to the many sharks filling the waters around them, but this felt different. When they looked out over the side, they were amazed to see the scaly head of a sea turtle looking back at them. The old Dougal Robertson might have let the beast swim away, but with his newfound mantra of survival at all costs still ringing in his ears, Dougal leapt to the dinghy and pulled the eighty-pound turtle aboard by its flippers, careful to avoid its sharp beak, which was now snapping wildly.

Slaughtering and butchering the turtle would be no easy trick, but Dougal used his combined experiences as a sailor and farmer and set to the task. He set his feet on each of the front flippers, held the beak in his left hand, and plunged the knife deep into the turtle’s neck, quickly killing it. Unfortunately, they had not learned yet that the blood of the turtle, which was spilled during the quick killing, was an extremely valuable food source.

The next days found them happy and motivated. They had food drying in strips all over the boats, water was plentiful for the moment, and they were driven by their collective will to live. Their mantra—“Survival!”—was repeated often, as a daily watchword. Their focus was clear and intense.

While Dougal played the role of hunter, Lyn’s days were full to overflowing as she tended to everyone’s well-being in one way or another. She worked hard to keep the twins, Neil and Sandy, active and moving to the extent that she could on the cramped raft. Her daily exercise regimen was a stroke of genius, but it should have extended to all the people on the raft, not just the twins. When you’re in cramped quarters and have little room to move, you need to do anything you can to prevent your muscles from atrophying. One of my favorite ways of doing this is by employing the yoga-like method I described in Chapter 3 (see “Curing the Nighttime Chills, page 50). Not only does it help generate heat in cold, cramped places, but it keeps the muscles active, too.

Lyn’s involvement did not end with exercise. She also looked after everyone’s skin, which was becoming peppered with various boils and sores, the result of exposure to the sun as well as the constant sitting in salt water. She also took care every day to dry out the bedsheets, which became soaked each night as water seeped into the raft. They didn’t stay dry for long, but it was comforting for everyone to at least lie down on something dry.

Lyn’s attention to the small details was brilliant. She not only occupied her time—and that of the others—with a series of small tasks, but her meticulous devotion to tidiness likely kept everyone as healthy as possible. Hygiene and cleanliness are often overlooked in survival situations, but they are important considerations, especially in the long term. Yet the one thing Lyn could not reconcile was the weakening condition of the twins, especially Neil, who had been so seasick when they first boarded the raft. She and Dougal discussed it at length, and finally decided that as long as they could harvest food from the sea, the raft’s emergency rations would be kept as supplemental rations for the twins only.

As a parent of two children, I certainly understand why they put the rations aside exclusively for the twins, but don’t necessarily agree with it. Their primary rationale was that the kids’ digestive systems might not be able to handle raw food, but the brutal fact is that if Lyn and Dougal didn’t survive, the chances of the rest of them surviving was greatly diminished. It seems they were doting on the twelve-year-olds quite a bit. In fact, the twins were quite capable of pitching in and helping out. But Lyn would have none of that. She focused on them constantly, often denying herself to give them more. She gave them “little dinners”—a bit of extra food beyond what the adults were eating. She even went so far as to pretend to drink her share of water when the jar was passed around, but only pressed the glass to her lips so there would be more for the twins. While seemingly noble, these were risky and unproductive steps to take. You can’t help anyone if you yourself are incapacitated. The caregiver must keep himself or herself as strong as, if not stronger than, those they are looking after. In a survival situation, selflessness can be stupidity.

I don’t mean to seem heartless here. I’ve never been in a survival situation with my kids, so don’t really know how I would react. And I recognize that children are weaker than adults, with less maturity and less resolve. If babying the twins gave Lyn and Dougal a focus that also helped keep themselves strong, it may have been the right thing to do. But the pampering seemed a bit much and possibly counterproductive to the survival of all. These were twelve-year-olds, not helpless toddlers.

The hours and days passed, yet the Robertsons were doing surprisingly well. They had food and water, and nobody had fallen ill. Yet the ordeal was beginning to take a gradual toll on their physical frames. The skin eruptions and boils that made sitting and sleeping so difficult were worsening. This was primarily due to the salt water, which was now leaking into the raft with alarming regularity. The life raft had sprung quite a few small leaks, and it looked as though the dinghy might soon become their home at sea. Dougal worried about whether the
Ednamair
was big enough to hold them all without capsizing on the ocean swells.

With so much time on his hands, Dougal obsessed over the idea of catching fish. I have been in many situations where a problem at hand has been solved by someone “obsessing” over it, as was the case when the plane crash victims needed a better water supply in the Andes mountains tragedy. In the right circumstances, obsessing can be useful; in this case, the waters were literally teeming with fish, yet the Robertsons could find no way of getting them out of the sea and into the boat. Dougal’s next idea was to impale them as they swam by, so he began carving a fish spear from an extra paddle handle.

This kind of innovation is a testimony to the Robertsons’ collective ingenuity and resilience. They were great at fixing problems when they arose. But the family—and Dougal in particular—never seemed to devote much energy to anticipating what might lie around the corner. Time and again, Dougal simply accepted the first solution to a problem that presented itself, apparently without taking the time to ask himself what else might go wrong and how he might deal with
that.
In reality, he would have been wise to look for two to three solutions to each problem.