The Last Voyage of the Lucette - Douglas Robertson
On board their 43-foot schooner Lucette, the Robertson family set sail from the south of England in January 1971. Eighteen months out, in the middle of the Pacific, Lucette was holed by killer whales and sank. Four adults and two children survived the next 38 days adrift, first in a survival raft,then crammed into a 9-foot dinghy, before being rescued by a Japanese fishing vessel. This is the story of how they survived, but also of the Lucette's voyage across the Atlantic, around the Caribbean, through the Panama Canal and out into the Pacific. It is a vivid and candid account of the delights and hardships, the excitements and dangers, and the emotional highs and lows experienced by the family both before and after the shipwreck.
the irony was , Robertson lost his first family in a japanese air attack on his ship during WW11, but his second family was saved by the crew of a japanese fishing boat when they had all but given up hope...after previous merchant ships sighted had sailed on, despite the firing of flares.
in the end, they were reduced to the wife and mother, a nurse, giving them enemas using the bilge water and an old plastic bag , a mixture of fish guts and briny water..apparently the colon can absorb the moisture from the undrinkable water without ill effect and helped them stay alive......amazing.
