By: Jonathan R. (Survivor, South Pacific)
We drifted for 14 hours. That is a "new" kind of hell. No wind. The sun turning your brain into scrambled eggs. Clara got physically sick from the diesel fumes leaking from the raft. By the time we saw land—a jagged, green smudge on the horizon—we were too exhausted to cheer. The island is small. Maybe two miles long, one mile wide. Volcanic rock, a strip of beach, and a dense jungle interior that smells like wet moss and decay. my wife and i shipwrecked on a desert island new
That night, we had the conversation every married couple dreads. We talked about the future. Would we have kids? (We weren't sure before. Now? Maybe.) Did we regret the trip? (Yes. No. Both.) We talked about our parents, our jobs, our stupid arguments about money. By: Jonathan R
But that is exactly where I am writing this. Sitting under a palm frond lean-to, using charcoal on a piece of driftwood. This is the story of how , and how we survived what the movies never tell you. The "New" Reality of an Old Nightmare When people hear the phrase "shipwrecked," they assume it happened in the 1800s. The "new" part of our story is this: it happened 48 hours ago. We were not on a 17th-century galleon. We were on a 40-foot catamaran, Sea Sprite , attempting a two-week honeymoon cruise from Fiji to New Zealand. No wind
On day two, we found a freshwater seep behind the beach. It was muddy, tasted like iron, but we drank. Clara, a botanist (ironic, right?), identified wild taro and coconuts. We ate coconut meat and drank the milk. For the first time, we felt a flicker of hope.