A photo of Don Cavers' sailboat that had to be abandoned in the Caribbean.

Image Credit: SUBMITTED

A Shuswap man found himself lost in the ocean and then shipwrecked but he persevered on a life raft.

Blind Bay resident Don Cavers, 77, spent multiple days in December, 2021, cut off from the world on his boat and then a life raft, followed by another five days on the merchant ship that saved him.

Cavers’ misadventure started after he purchased a new sailboat from Columbia and began sailing it all the way to Puerto Rico – more than 1,000 kilometres apart.

“It wasn’t a blue water boat and it was in blue water conditions coming out of Columbia,” he said.

Cavers first lost contact with the outside world after circuits were shorted after too much water made its way into the boat while navigating rough waters. The autopilot was also damaged so for the next five-and-a-half days he was steering by hand for 16 to 18 hours per day.

Things went from bad to worse on the final night when his boat crashed into a reef. He was awoken by the impact and tried his best to save the boat.

“I got the engine started and I had almost succeeded in saving it,” he said.

But at the last moment, the rudder snagged, the stern became torn open, and the boat “started sinking pretty quick.”

Upon realizing the boat was not salvageable, “you’re basically just grabbing things at that point and looking at your option,” he said.

Cavers had about five minutes to get his things together and the water in the boat was up to his chest when he grabbed the final items.

From the life raft, "it wasn’t too nice to watch this island I was fairly close to gradually disappear in the distance the next day,” he said.

Most of his food had either been eaten over the course of the five days prior or became spoiled by the leaking seawater.

READ MORE: Rescue society praises B.C.'s teen's survival skills after he got lost snowmobiling

Fortunately he at least had nachos and crackers. He remembers having six or eight remaining when he was finally saved after six days on the raft.

“I would look forward to my couple of chips or couple of crackers, but a glass of water was kind of more important.”

He still had 14 litres of drinking water remaining when he was saved.

Asked if he was getting worried about his depleting food, he said he found a new source of calories hours before the rescue.

“Just that morning I figured out a way to catch fish so I wasn’t that panicked about it,” he said.

As Cavers was tinkering around with the raft to try and speed up his rate of drift, he realized small fish were attracted to the drogue.

“I chuckle when I think back on it, there was not a speck of hesitation about eating them,” he said about the raw fish.

“I wouldn’t say it was tasty but it went down pretty easy. Except I spit one up for being too boney.”

Cavers has fasted for a day or two in the past but never to that extent.

“Your body comes to expect food at a certain expect to be fed, but when it gets past the mealtime, especially if you’re busy, then you forget about it," he said.

It was when he was finally saved by the merchant ship, after six days floating in the raft, that he realized how much his body had weakened, as he had to climb up a a rope ladder from where he was at the waterline.

But there was a delicious reward waiting for him at the top.

“They gave me a chicken and gravy snack when I got aboard and that was pretty welcome,” he said.

The sailors were a crew from the Philippines who travel back and forth from Jamaica and Louisiana every two weeks.

“That’s their life – I was the most exciting thing that happened for them in a while,” Cavers said.

Cavers’ biggest regret was no bringing a waterproof GPD, and his biggest concern was for his family back home who had good reason to fear for the worst. The thing he was happiest to do after arriving home was hug his three grandchildren.

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