Douglas Robertson

We thought that, you know, they've hit us and they, Lucette, how can we be safe here?

And there was a lot of trepidation while we were waiting for them to come back and reappear, but they didn't.

It was my mum that asked the question, Dougal, are we going to die?

Dougal had to come up with an answer for that question.

And Dougal explained that he considered lying to us, that everything will be all right.

But then he thought that he owed us the truth.

And if we were going to die, that we needed to prepare for that.

And he mustn't shield us from that.

But he didn't want to alarm us either.

And it was then that we had a long conversation about where we were, 200 miles west of Cape Espinoza, two degrees south of the equator, what we had, what tools and effects that we had, how much water we had, what our possible sources of rescue were.

It looked pretty grim, I've got to tell you, you know, but

As we talked about this, slowly, slowly, a plan came together about how, well, look, we're two degrees south.

The wind is blowing out the southeast, blowing us to the northwest, you know.

What routes are open to us, you know?

We were sailing to the Marquesas.

Can we still sail to the Marquesas?

Downwind and down current, effectively.

But it was 45 days on the Lucette.

It would have been 80 days on the raft and

We only had water for 10 days and it doesn't rain very much in the trade winds.