By Steven Callahan
Editor’s note: The film 76 Days Adrift, directed by Joseph Wein, opened in November 2024. Reviewers have praised its authenticity and emotional depth, also singling it out for its use of actual footage from Steven Callahan’s 1982 survival voyage across the Atlantic after his boat collided with a whale, along with detailed recreations of portions of the adventure.
Because the film called for shooting scenes in the Caribbean, from St. Croix, in the United States Virgin Islands, Callahan shares his reflections of the experience with the Caribbean Compass community. Over a decade ago, Callahan’s unique perspective on survival at sea was tapped by director Ang Lee, who hired him as survival and marine consultant for his film Life of Pi, winner of four Academy Awards including Best Achievements in Directing and Cinematography, and several more nominations.
When I first stepped out of the aircraft on St. Thomas, in the USVI, back in the 1960s, the feel and smell of tropical islands became an immediate lure. I would sail to, from, and around the Caribbean numerous times over the decades, but a visit in January 2022 during Covid via the ultimate upwind machine captained by American Airlines would be unique and bring me full circle.
My initial attempt to cross the Atlantic for the first time on my 21-footer in 1981 was short-lived due to a dismasting en route from Newport, Rhode Island, to Bermuda, but jury rigging the boat and returning to Newport delivered some lasting gifts, one of which was to meet Roger Hatfield, who was repairing a big catamaran. With partner Rich Difede, Roger was carving out a marina and boat design-and-building business, Gold Coast Yachts, on St. Croix, just west of Christiansted. We shared our loves for designing and building boats, living aboard, voyaging, and racing, much of it on multihulls, still an uncommon breed except in the world of offshore adventure racing, which also was in its adolescence and more of a personal adventure than the fully professional sport it is today. We’ve been mates ever since.
Rog expected to see me stop into St. Croix on my return crossing early in 1982. Alas, I never showed, or at least not for months. I lost Napoleon Solo on the return, spent 2.5 months in a life raft, and demonstrated the absolute dumbest and slowest way to cross an ocean, but I rarely give up on things, and found my way to the French West Indies and then to Gold Coast.
Over 30 years later, Joe Wein approached me with the proposal to create a documentary of the book I wrote about this journey, what I call my “fish tale,” Adrift, Seventy-Six Days Lost at Sea. Since its publication in 1986, a number of folks had proposed film adaptations, but scripts I had read were centered on “Hollywood” and landlubberly visions of life and survival offshore. One actually ended with me and some unknown woman “humping like bunnies on the beach.” I had to laugh. Joe’s documentary would incorporate a week of interviews and my archival footage of crossing the Atlantic on Solo, and promised to more closely reveal life offshore on a small boat and in my six-person Avon, which I had dubbed Rubber Ducky III.
I had worked on two feature films and several other documentaries, and knew the latter were generally true labors of love with highly restrained budgets. I was not surprised when Joe had to persevere for a decade, but even so, he still needed a final visual element that would at least approximate what it was really like offshore in Ducky.
Joe had envisioned tearing up his backyard and flooding it to make a wave tank. Backgrounds would be painted in using computer graphics. Despite the fundamental challenges to any filming on the sea, this seemed a sure road to familial strain. Why not retain as much reality by filming in similar tropical waters? But how do we actually make it happen?
Once again, I dragged Rog, and through him, Rich, into my old drama. By January 2022, Gold Coast Yachts already had built more than 100 custom boats, almost all multihulls from 40 to over 100 feet and primarily designed by Roger. He and Rich agreed to support the effort. Rog served as the film’s marine coordinator, and Rich kindly lent us a power catamaran that he had saved from ruin and rebuilt. Fast, comfortable, with shade for us pale-faced northerners, and room for carrying an inflated raft, it turned out to be the perfect support craft. Their contacts on St. Croix also proved essential.
Joe had his shot list, and every morning I would hurriedly make props. We often anchored off Salt River and set Joe adrift on a long tether. He and his son had fashioned a camera rig that was mounted on his chest. He could see the output via an iPhone mounted on top. Instead of using an actor to play me, my interviews serve as narration while Joe’s rig offers a first-person “point of view,” as if each audience member is the survivor. A drone operator captured external shots of the raft actually drifting in the Caribbean, and a diver filmed what it looked like when I faced my biggest crisis — holing the bottom of my raft.
For me, these shoots were highlights. Indeed, I had long held images in my head of what this all looked like from a third-person point of view, but it was intensely interesting to see it in reality. Even moving around in a half-deflated raft, not to mention trying to live in it, proved more staggering than I remembered.
Many details are admittedly not the same as they were in 1982. We could not replicate a real gale. Some gear was long unavailable. We lacked an enormous budget and a whole department devoted to finding and making custom props, which I had enjoyed when working on The Life of Pi. But Joe had found a rare period-perfect solar still and raft, and we replicated the evolution of the spear gun and other details as closely as we could. Rog had worked with the Coast Guard for decades because many Gold Coast boats are certified to carry passengers, and he got permission to light off flares.
We headed out to the mouth of Salt River. Seeing the real thing was, let’s say, enlightening, visually and conceptually. We were entertained when we began hearing folks on shore or anchored boats reported to the Coast Guard that someone was in trouble on the reef, and encouraged that people were paying attention.
Getting to St. Croix during the pandemic was a challenge, but once there, we enjoyed a near-normal existence mostly out of doors enjoying warmth, incredible water, and good company, including Roger’s and Rich’s gracious friends.
The filming of 76 Days Adrift could not have been possible without the people of St. Croix, who were nothing but kind and hospitable. On the south coast of St. Croix, a Gold Coast employee with his fishing boat and friends even served as my saviors for the final scenes of my rescue. The film has taken me from 1981 when I was a keen young man setting off on an adventure across the briny through my life raft drift to the present and back again, reminding me of the enormous gifts I’ve been bestowed along this winding voyage, from sailing as a lifestyle, adventure racing, and multihulls to relationships going back over 40 years, the tropics, still as delightful as my first visit in the 1960s, and as it turns out, even to an old fish tale about how not to cross the Atlantic.
Read more here about 76 Days Adrift and Steven Callahan’s participation in the Oscar-honored Life of Pi:
