“We’re going to die here,” I said. “No one knows where we are. The ship went down two hundred miles off course. The EPIRB was on the boat. It’s gone.”
“You crazy,” he said in English. “Two months no one come here. You lucky.”
Avoid unknown berries. Coconuts provide both hydration and calories, but be careful when climbing trees or opening them. 4. Psychological Survival The biggest challenge for a couple is morale.
For me, the answer is Eleanor. And miraculously, after everything, the answer for her is still me.
We also learned the heavy cost of friction. In normal life, an argument means someone walks into the next room or takes a drive to cool down. On a desert island, there is no next room. If we argued over how to store our meager water supply or where to pile the firewood, the tension hung in the air like the humidity. We couldn't escape each other's presence.
But you can control who you hold onto when the water rises.
By week three, we had a routine. We had shelter (a cave that flooded if the tide went too high). We had food (fish, coconuts, and a particularly disgusting type of sea snail that Eleanor learned to cook without poisoning us). We had water.
I, meanwhile, became her hands. I gathered firewood. I climbed the highest ridge every morning to look for ships. I built a signal fire that we never lit—waiting for a vessel on the horizon. I did the heavy lifting while she did the heavy thinking.
