Large pods of dolphins them used to come and play around the boat, especially at night. This is the nearest I've ever been to a shipwreck, those terrible storms. Actually you can see it in the dark as there is so much phosphorescence.

I used to try to do the night watches so I didn't have to sleep when people couldn't see the sea. This went on for three days and we all had bad backs. The waves were so high that hitting one at the wrong angle (this is why you need someone good on the helm) felt like hitting wood and the boat would shudder and we would bounce inches up and then slam down on our bunks. But there were such terrible storms for days, that we couldn't even get close to either the Archipelago or Fernado de Norona. We were supposed to go to the St Peter and Paul Archipelago and thence to Fernando de Norona. No wind for days, but waterspouts and squalls several times an hour. We sailed to Cape Verde (got machine-gunned by the police in Russian-made motorcycles with sidecars off Brava) and then, as the author did, although we were sailing different passages, got stuck in the doldrums.

We set off from Las Palmas on Gran Canaria, as did the author, having sailed there from the UK. The rest of this has only a very small relationship to the book! I've sailed the Atlantic too. It's a fantastic book if you are a sailor or like real-life adventure stories or even just want a good read that isn't like any other book. There is nothing I can write further that wouldn't be a spoiler. He had studied books on surviving at sea, he'd bought all the correct gear, practised the manoeuvres necessary to get off a sinking boat as fast as possible and within hours of setting off from the Canaries, his boat sank. He was a delivery skipper sailing boats from one place to another and he very much wanted to do a single-handed across the Atlantic. 10 Stars If anyone was going to get shipwrecked and survive alone on the Atlantic it was Steve Callahan.

Lost ocean book