Status Updates From Naufragé Volontaire

To hope is to seek better things. The survivor of a shipwreck, deprived of everything, must never lose hope. The simple and brutal problem confronting him is that of death or survival. He will need to bolster his courage with all his resources all his faith in life to fight off despair.

Since leaving Monaco, I have lived on seawater for fourteen days and on fish juice for forty-three. I have conquered thirst at sea.

Nice thing to hear from a flight attendant:

And what better tribute could there be to the positive impact of my trip than when she said to me, “If I ever have to land on the water, I hope it will be today, while you’re here.”

Moreover, I hold responsible for my death those who prevented me from having the radio transmitter I so badly need at the moment.

It is frightening to realize to what extent one can develop a persecution mania alone on the surface of the sea; it really seems as if one is the victim of a conspiracy which one will never defeat.
...
Jean Luc, if I am dead on arrival, please publish a book made up of these entries...

Such a common feeling among people in survival situations, usually articulated almost the same way:

For all I seem of them, every ship in the world might have sunk and every aircraft crashed.

The closest thing to profundity so far:

When you have a toothache, it seems terrible, and you wish to be rid of it, even at the cost of a horrible earache. When the earache strikes, the toothache seems like a pleasant memory. In what seems to you the worst as well as the best, I can only give you one piece of advice: maintain your detachment.

The accomplishment is undeniable but this guy is destroying his own credibility with every page:

A wave broke near me...threatening a capsize....With this in mind, I had already put a little packet of barbiturates in my shirt pocket...I was not going to fight it out for 30 hours or more...I thought the best thing was to put myself to sleep straight away.

"That day I was followed in the water by a long, green sausage, about ten feet long and nine inches or so in diameter. It was not a seaweed because it moved and wriggled. It finally cured me of any ideas of a swim."

Literally claiming he used his feces instead of glue to patch his boat.

This guy and his shark stories:

On the night of Thursday, November 6th, I was attacked again by a shark, this time one that wouldn't let up; this one was particularly tough: it must have already eaten humans. I fixed my knife to the end of my oar as it rammed against my boat. I was ready to defend myself, and when it rolled onto its belly again to attack me from three-quarters, I plunged my weapon into its body...

Between the upside down shark, the glowing half of a dead bird, and the "several hundred meters" swim to get a cushion and return to the boat that was not anchored in any way--the obscurity of this book might be due to its apocryphal qualities.

Still the ultimate authority on long established advice:

“The shipwrecked person must not remove their clothes, even if they are wet.” I realized, as soon as I got wet two days after setting off, that clothes, even wet ones, maintain body heat.

In the evening, the work is barely finished; quite tired and not wanting to put my work to too much strain, because after all, it's the last sail I have left and I don't want it to be torn away, I sleep with the anchor still in place; sometimes you have to know how to lose precious hours.

VS

"I had to put out the sea anchor again and resigned myself to the loss of further precious hours."

Google: Fate, as we know, is ironic; No sooner had the wind settled than the sail tore across its widest point, that faithful sail that had carried me from Monaco to the Canaries.

Print: But fate has its own ironies; hardly had I trimmed the sail to the wind, when it tore right across its broadest part. It had brought me all the way from Monaco to the Canaries.

Talk about hubris:

"L'Heretique was completely submerged...I started scooping out water with my two hands and then with my hat...Each big wave hit the stern-board with a thud, and the water flowed in anew, making the work of the previous ten minutes or quarter of an hour useless, pointless and hopeless...I can only say to my fellow castaways: be more obstinate than the sea, and you will win."

Google: What would happen if I were just below the breaking point of a liquid mass?

Print: I wondered what would happen if L'Heretique came just under one of these on-rushing waterfalls.

The first 50 pages were the reason for and the execution of his first experiment on the raft in the Mediterranean. The next 50 were almost entirely self-congratulatory praise and resentful rebukes of the naysayers who predicted his failure. The achievement is still undeniable and the parts that describe technique are undeniably entertaining; Bombard even manages humor, but there's very little modesty.

They offered me food and drink. I refused; in fact, from that point of view, everything is fine. I'm catching magnificent mackerel every day and, I must say, I'm starting to get used to raw fish. The water of the Atlantic seems delightful compared to that of the Mediterranean. It's much less salty and quenches my thirst perfectly.

But my book is in English, and authors generally dwell on explaining the whys and wherefores instead of showing how to do things. In the end, the results are rather disappointing, which doesn't affect my spirits too much.

Some parts are more eloquent than others:

A few agonizing minutes. Yes! The Spartel is there, I cross it, and in the dazzling light of the setting sun, on this memorable Thursday, I enter the promised ocean! The counter-current that carried me like a helpful river, carving its vein from the great hostile river, has brought me here for my rendezvous with the great experience.

Six more days of seawater followed, and we were then close to the safety limit – then two more days – with no kidney problems observed. In other words, for fourteen days, we drank fish water for four days and seawater for ten days. Interrupting this seawater regimen allowed us to double its duration without any problems.

“My dear sir, for me to believe that…” I handed him a newspaper clipping that had reported our upcoming departure. Then, in front of our flag, this old Spanish officer stepped back, snapped to attention, and said:

“Well, gentlemen, long live France!”

Yellow was Jack, yellow was I, even the atmosphere took on this daffodil tint.

This event, to my knowledge, has not been reported anywhere. On the other hand, what publicity our acceptance would have generated! The Sidi-Ferruch incident, encountered ten days later, amply demonstrates this.

Bombard makes the story very consumable, builds anticipation, even though the phrasing can be strange in English. Definitely a sense of humor, which seems appropriately dark.

How many people can only eat horse or cat if they think they're eating beef or rabbit! It's all a matter of habit.

On land, however, my reasoning seemed irreproachable to him, and he had agreed to try the experiment. But once he found himself in the actual conditions, the "taboo" placed on seawater for generations still reigned supreme in his mind. Thus, in the same lifeboat, the classic, orthodox shipwrecked type met with the modern, heretical shipwrecked one.

Continuing the tradition of pioneering sea navigation:

"There's one point that needs to be clearly understood: our inflatable boat could hardly sail upwind. To become shipwrecked, we needed to get as far from the coast as possible, because if an unfavorable wind had picked up, we would have been immediately driven ashore. To avoid this, we needed to be towed, like the Kon-Tiki, about ten miles from the coast."