The story is old, but so good that it is not a sin to tell it again
Alain Bombard was the doctor on duty at the Boulogne hospital when 43 sailors were brought there - victims of the shipwreck at Pier Carnot. None of them were saved. Alain reproached himself for not being able to do anything for them. He began collecting information about shipwrecks. It turned out that around the world in such disasters about 200 thousand people die annually. Of these, 50 thousand manage to get over to lifeboats and rafts, but all the same, after a while they die a painful death. And 90% of the victims die within the first three days after the shipwreck. Bombar wrote: “The victims of the legendary shipwrecks who died prematurely, I know: it was not the sea that killed you, it was not hunger that killed you, it was not thirst that killed you! Swaying on the waves to the plaintive cries of seagulls, you died of fear."
And he decided to cross the Atlantic Ocean in a tiny inflatable boat. Without food and water - to prove that a person is able to survive after a shipwreck.
But before that, Alain spent six months in the laboratories of the Oceanographic Museum of Monaco. He studied the chemical composition of sea water, types of plankton, the structure of marine fish. The Frenchman learned that more than half of the sea fish is fresh water. And fish meat contains less salt than beef. So, Bombar decided, you can quench your thirst with the juice squeezed out of the fish.
At first, swimming was not conceived as a solitary one. Bombar was looking for a companion for a long time, even giving advertisements in the newspapers. But letters came from suicides (“please take me on a voyage, because I have already tried unsuccessfully to commit suicide three times already”), madmen (“I am a very good travel companion, besides, I will give you permission to eat me when you are hungry”) or not too smart readers (“I propose to test your theory on my family, for a start I ask to accept my mother-in-law into the crew, I have already received her consent”).
In the end, an unemployed yachtsman, Jack Palmer from Panama, was found. Bombar later did not reproach him, but after two weeks of test sailing from Monaco to the island of Mallorca, during which the researchers ate only two sea bass, a few spoons of plankton and drank several liters of seawater, Jack Palmer changed his mind and simply did not come to sail. And Alain Bombard sailed across the Atlantic alone.
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He named his boat "The Heretic". It was a tightly inflated rubber punt 4 m 65 cm long and 1 m 90 cm wide with a wooden stern and a light wooden deck at the bottom. The Heretic moved with the help of a rectangular sail measuring about 1.5 x 2 m. Retractable keels, oars, mast, hoists and other equipment were extremely simple and inconvenient. In principle, he did not take any fishing rods or nets with him, he decided to make it out of improvised means, as befits a shipwrecked. He tied a knife to the end of the oar and bent the tip to form a harpoon. When he harpooned the first dorada, he also got the first fishhooks, which he made from fish bones.
On the very first nights, Bombar was caught in a storm. It is impossible to actively resist the waves on a rubber boat, it was only possible to bail out the water. He did not think to take the scoop with him, so he used a hat, quickly became exhausted, lost consciousness and woke up in the water. The boat was completely filled with water, only rubber floats remained on the surface. Before the boat was afloat, he scooped out water for two hours: each time new water nullified all his work.
As soon as the storm died down, the sail burst. Bombar replaced it with a spare one, but after half an hour, a storm that had flown in tore off a new sail and carried it along with all the fasteners. Bombar had to sew up the old one, and so he went all the way under it.
It is believed that a person can live no more than 10 days without water. Bombar only on the 23rd day of the voyage was able to drink fresh water, falling into a strip of torrential rain. How did he survive? I used sea water. “Alas, you can't drink sea water for more than five days in a row,” Alain specified. - I say this as a doctor, otherwise you can ruin the kidneys. You need to take a break of at least three days. And then this cycle can be repeated."
During these three days, Bombar drew water from fish. Bombar cut the meat into small pieces and squeezed out the liquid with a shirt. It turned out to be a slurry of fat and juice, disgusting in taste, but insipid. It is easier with large fish: you can make incisions on its body and immediately drink the juice. To avoid scurvy, the navigator ate plankton every day - it is rich in vitamin C. “It was enough to throw an ordinary sock on a rope overboard to get a total of two tablespoons of plankton during the day,” Bombar assured. “Unlike raw fish, it tastes good. The feeling that you are eating lobsters or shrimps."
Bombar refused waterproof workwear. He was wearing regular pants, a shirt, a sweater and a jacket. The Frenchman believed that he was already superbly equipped. After all, when a ship sinks, a person usually does not have time to think about his wardrobe. Already on the second day after sailing, getting soaked through, Bombar discovered that even wet clothes retain body heat. So another rule was born: "A shipwrecked person should not take off his clothes, even if they are wet."
After sixty-five days of sailing, Alain Bombar reached the island of Barbados. He lost 25 kg, the level of erythrocytes and hemoglobin bordering on fatal, he was diagnosed with a serious visual impairment, his toenails fell out, all his skin was covered with a rash and small pimples. The body was dehydrated and extremely emaciated, but it reached the shore. On his boat there was an emergency supply of food, the safety of which was officially certified at the end of the experiment - he never touched the NZ.
He wrote the book Overboard of his own free will
Then he received more than ten thousand letters, the authors of which thanked him with the words: "If it were not for your example, we would have died in the harsh waves of the deep sea."