Somewhere in the Indian Ocean ("1700 nautical miles from the Sumatra Straights"), the unnamed main character (Robert Redford)
narrates, "I'm sorry. I know that means little at this point, but I am.
I tried. I think you would all agree that I tried. To be true, to be
strong, to be kind, to love, to be right. But I wasn't." He declares
that, "All is lost."
Eight days earlier, he wakes up and sees that water has partially flooded his boat, the Virginia Jean, a Cal 39. He goes out onto the deck and sees that his boat has collided with a wayward shipping container and ripped a hole in the hull. He goes below to get a sea anchor
and ties it to the container. He then steers the boat away from the
container and eventually gets it to dislodge. He goes to work patching
up the hole in his boat and then uses a knife to carve a piece of wood
until it can fit in the manual- or hand-bilge pump
hole, as he has lost the lever for it. After the cleanup, he finds that
the boat’s navigational and communications systems have been damaged
from the collision. He pulls out the radio equipment and pours fresh
water on the interior of the devices to remove conductive sea salt from
them. Then, using one of the yacht's service batteries, he connects
power to the radio and attempts to get it working. This fails at first
but when he returns to the cabin and begins to read a book on celestial navigation,
the radio suddenly starts to work. He hurries to it and tries to
transmit a distress call, but eventually the radio's battery power fails
and the radio becomes useless once more. The seafarer later climbs the
mast and discovers a disconnected antenna lead. He reconnects this lead
although the purpose of this action is unclear as all radio equipment is
either destroyed or completely inoperable by this stage.
A storm quickly converges on his position, and he tries everything he
can to outrun it and stay on course, but he is thrown overboard and
only just regains the deck after a long struggle. The boat capsizes,
destroying the mast and all the equipment on board. With the boat badly
damaged and sinking, he decides to abandon ship in an inflatable life raft, salvaging whatever he can to survive.
As he learns how to operate a sextant he recovered from the boat, he figures his best hope of being found is to use the ocean currents to carry him to the shipping lanes.
During the journey, his supplies dwindle, and he learns too late that
his drinking water has been contaminated with sea water. He improvises,
using condensation from plastic bags to get fresh water.
He reaches the shipping lanes and is passed by two container ships.
They do not notice him and continue on, despite his use of signalling
flares. He eventually drifts out of the shipping lanes and back to open
ocean. However, he is out of food and water and cannot hope to survive
much longer. On the eighth day, he writes a letter (as was narrated at
the beginning of the movie), puts it in a jar, and throws it in the
water as a message bottle for anyone to find.
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