Coffee enemas. Really? Is that actually a thing? Peering over my glasses, my cell phone is inches from my face. My eyes pan the screen. It just looks like a blue bag to me. The coffee grounds are an accessory item. I shift focus. I am thinking about our ditch bag contents; the emergency supplies we will pack for our upcoming Pacific Crossing.

“Tools needed to carve turtle meat”
Oh geez. I quickly regret googling that. (Fortunately, most websites are focused on sea turtle conservation. But, a handful of people seem to be raising pets for food.)

“Shark deterrents and magnets” reveals a $500 item. This falls outside my vision of time spent afloat, and exceeds the budget for what I’m willing to spend on gear that seems frivolous for our life raft.

Rethinking Our Ditch Bag

One of my short-term goals is to revamp the gear for our life raft. Sailors call this gear a ‘ditch bag’. A ditch bag includes supplies you might need to leave your boat on short notice. We keep our ditch bag in a locker in the cockpit of our boat. Like our life raft, the ditch bag is easily accessible.

What Belongs in a Ditch Bag?

Three years ago, I put together a ditch bag. The bag itself was bright yellow. It was an expensive and authoritative-looking, manufactured by a survivalist company. I researched items considered to be essential and put them in the bag.

But, the trouble with our old ditch bag is that the items that I included were geared for rescue at sea, not long-term survival. I included food rations and bags of water. I also packed two weeks of medicine and added a bottle of hand sanitizer.

What Books Taught Me About Life Raft Survival

Then I read the book “Adrift: 76 Days Lost at Sea” by Steven Callahan. (And, by the way, this book is a completely different story to the 2018 movie with the same name.) After reading the book, I realized that we needed different gear for a Pacific Crossing.

I spent yesterday reading “Sea Survival,” by Douglas Robertson. in 1971, Robertson spent 38 days aboard a life raft, with his family and a student hitchhiker.

I made notes as to how to build a better gear list. Then, I realized that Robertson had already compiled a list at the back of his book.

Robertson’s son wrote his account in the book, “The Last Voyage of the Lucette.”

Both Callahan and Robertson lived through desperate situations. Callahan was a consultant for the 2012 movie Life of Pi. Their books are gritty and well removed from the flashy marketing materials you see from survivalist companies.

Instead, of telling you to bring flashing beacons, these men provide an unsanitized view of what works for real-world survival in a life raft.

Body temperature, infected boils, morale, and shark attacks are front-and-center material. Both men (Callahan and Robertson senior) describe drinking warm turtle blood, sucking on the eyes of fish, or drinking the liquid between the spiny back bones of their fish.

The Things You Never Think You Will Need

I struggle to imagine this sort of survivalist savagery. I will be purchasing a hand-operated, desalination pump.

For Robertson’s family this tool would have changed life considerably. When oral hydration methods failed, their family used makeshift gear (a funnel, tubes from a ladder, etc.) to replenish fluids. I understand that Robertson describes this situation in his book, “Survive the Savage Sea.”

My research is far from complete. I wouldn’t have thought a six-foot gaff hook would have a place on a life raft. Robertson says it’s important for catching fish.

As I read Robertson’s gear list I wonder if it is actually possible to pre-pack a fish trap fluorescent sea dye, magnifying glass, rain water collection system, sunglasses, a tarp and not feel like I’m packing like a celebrity diva rushing with the help of aides through Heathrow.

Maybe I Am Overthinking This

In my darkest imaginings, I feel the swell rising and hands flailing as my husband grabs the ditch bag and says from behind a spray of sea and foam, “What the hell do you have in here?” And I yell, “Multivitamins, they are so important for the prevention of scurvy. Our kids can’t take the adult dosage.”

And, a wave would hit, and the ditch bag would hover between us. Then, with a gut-wrenching step my husband would leap into our life raft and cut the painter.

Drifting away from our boat, we would activate our EPIRBs (emergency beacons). The waves would punch and froth again. And, above all the turmoil, I might hear Poseidon shout, “Life raft gear: perhaps you’re overthinking this..”

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