Cori’s Pick: 438 Days: An Extraordinary True Story of Survival at Sea by Jonathan Franklin.

438 Days.  No, this is not my projection of how long I believe our daily lives will be altered by our current ‘situation’.  HOWEVER,  I do think it’s ironic that the day the Library ended up having to close to the public due to COVID-19 this happened to be the book I was reading…hmmm.

Since I am not able to connect with you face-to-face (which is much preferred, by the way), I’m getting back to using this platform and I hope you will follow along and find some good books to keep you company in this very weird time.

438 Days: An Extraordinary True Story of Survival at Sea by Jonathan Franklin.  This book found me by way of a friend that said he remembered hearing a survival at sea story in the news a while back and lucky for me, when I started digging there (of course!) was a book to give me the full account.  I ended up reading it cover-to-cover in 2 days, which for me is probably a record.  This book tells the unbelievable story of a pair of fisherman that left the coast of Mexico in 2012 hoping to score a huge catch and cash in on a great pay day.  What they got, was a failed motor and a plethora of other bad breaks, sending them literally adrift on a 25 foot boat…for 438 days.  Think about that.

In the end, the boat drifted nearly 7,000 miles from Mexico to the Marshall Islands.  This read ended up being timely and truly put our current situation in perspective for me – no Cori, it’s not the end of the world that you can’t go to the beach on your day off and buy 3-ply toilet paper at your leisure, you’ll survive.  The fishermen in this story truly did not know if survival was an option.  They lived moment to moment, figuring out shelter, food, water, mental health, etc. and then had to readjust into society.  I found this book to be captivating and I highly recommend trying it out.