Douglas Robertson

I used to watch the sun go down at night.

and wonder if we'd still be around in the morning to see it.

Because the nights were worse, you know.

You couldn't see where the weather was coming from.

It was more difficult to manage things in the darkness.

Another day would come and suddenly a week's gone by.

It actually rained on the sixth day as well.

The first rain that we got, we managed to save some water, you know, and replenish our water stocks.

We'd had a flying fish jump into the dinghy.

I'd bailed the dinghy out.

We started towing the raft with the dinghy.

We'd made a sail out of that generous sail that I'd caught.

And with that, we had a little

Operation Go, a towed boat, we had a raft, and we were sailing towards the north to the doldrums where water was.

We were carefully consuming our water with sips only.

It wasn't rationed, it was self-rationed, which was even worse, you know.

As much as you want, but as little as you need.

Please be careful with the water.

We would take just a sip of water.

We would just have a little tiny bit of food, a little bit of fish, that had jumped in, the flying fish, between six of us.