At 48° North, we think of Steve Callahan as a friend after working together on a Wooden Boat Festival panel and consider his 48° North interview to be one of our favorite conversations in recent memory—it was so good we split it into part one and part two. His incredible story of survival at sea is being told in a new way with an award-winning documentary that is now available to stream from your home.
76 Days Adrift, the award-winning feature documentary based on Steven Callahan’s New York Times bestselling memoir Adrift: 76 Days Lost at Sea, became available to rent or purchase on Apple TV on September 29. The film will arrive on Amazon and Google Play on October 20.
Told by Callahan in his own words, 76 Days Adrift is designed to put the audience on the raft with him. Through immersive visual storytelling, the film brings viewers inside the isolation, danger, ingenuity and unexpected beauty of his 76-day ordeal. The result is as much an ocean adventure and survival thriller as it is a documentary. Audience members have described the film as a white-knuckle experience, even when they already knew how Callahan’s remarkable story would end.
In 1982, Callahan’s small sailboat sank in the Atlantic Ocean. Alone in an inflatable life raft, he survived by combining ingenuity, resourcefulness and determination. His account became the New York Times bestselling memoir Adrift: 76 Days Lost at Sea, one of the most widely known and influential survival stories in the sailing community.
“Sailors have known and loved Steven’s story for decades,” said director Joe Wein. “But we wanted the film to do more than recount what happened. We wanted audiences to feel as though they were there with him, experiencing the danger, wonder and enormity of being alone on the Atlantic.”
76 Days Adrift is executive produced by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Ang Lee and Steven Callahan. The original score was composed by Patrick Stump, lead singer and songwriter of Fall Out Boy, who also recorded a new cover song for the film.
The documentary has won multiple festival and audience awards and screened at film festivals throughout the United States, including DOC NYC, the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, the Boulder International Film Festival and the Annapolis Film Festival. It opened the Hot Docs Doc Soup series and was eligible for Academy Award consideration for Documentary Feature and Original Score.
The film has drawn coverage from People Magazine, The Boston Globe and leading sailing publications including Cruising World and Chesapeake Bay Magazine. It has also been embraced by sailing audiences, with yacht clubs across the country licensing it for special screenings.
Learn more at https://76daysadrift.com
