Adrift: Seventy-Six Days Lost at Sea.

CALLAHAN, Steven.

Item Number: 115588

New York: Bantam Press, 1986.

First edition of one of the greatest adventure stories of all time. Octavo, original cloth, illustrated by the author. From the library of of James Stephen “Steve” Fossett with his bookplate to the pastedown. American businessman and record-setting aviator Steve Fossett became the first person to fly solo nonstop around the world in 2002 in his 10-story high balloon Spirit of Freedom. He completed the 2002 trip in 13 days, 8 hours, and 33 minutes and set records for both the Longest Distance Flown Solo in a Balloon and Fastest Balloon Flight Around the World. Fossett was also one of sailing’s most prolific distance record holders set the Absolute World Speed Record for airships with a Zeppelin NT in 2004. He received numerous awards and honors throughout his career including aviation’s highest award, the Gold Medal of the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI), which he was awarded in 2002. Fossett disappeared on September 3, 2007 while flying a light aircraft over the Great Basin Desert, between Nevada and California. Fine in a fine dust jacket. Author photograph by Benjamin Mendlowitz. Cover photograph by Stuart Chorley.

When Steven Callahan's small sailing boat was sunk be a whale west of the Canary Islands, he found himself alone in the mid-Atlantic in a five-foot inflatable raft with only enough food and water to last eighteen days. Pounded by storms, scorched by the tropical sun, buffered by dorados and sharks, he drifted for eighteen hundred miles, and became the only man in history to survive more than a month at sea in an inflatable raft.