Steven Callahan(I)
- Additional Crew
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Producer
Since about age 10, when he helped his brothers build small barges out
of roofing tar and old roofing boards to use on a pond, Steven Callahan
has spent much of the his 60 years "messing about in boats." By age 12
was sailing out of sight of land. He taught himself the basics of boat
design and celestial navigation, and helped build a 40 footer prior to
graduating high school. As an adult, since 1974, he first built boats
before turning to designing boats, teaching design, and writing about
all aspects of the marine world. He's lived aboard for five years,
raced offshore, captained boat deliveries, and sailed more than 80,000
offshore miles, most shorthanded and much on unusual craft. These
experiences have inspired most of Callahan's creative work.
He is particularly keen on exploring and helping to bring to the public
the diversity, wonders, dangers, beauty, and sometimes horrors of the
offshore wilderness and survival experiences, especially since his own
survival voyage in 1982 when he lost his boat and spent two and a half
months "learning to live like an aquatic caveman" while drifting about
2,000 miles across the Atlantic. He is probably best known for his New
York Times best seller Adrift: Seventy Six Days Lost at Sea, which has
also been adapted for stage, based on that event.
Callahan uses his own and others' survival experiences to focus on the
common stages of survival, the successful strategies survivors employ
to adapt, and especially how challenges can ultimately serve as
opportunities. Survival is the universal human issue, but how we meet
it will vary widely. Callahan accepts that life will step on our toes,
that we will not emerge without scars, but he also embraces the idea
that we can learn to enhance our chances of survival and hopefully gain
at least as much as we lose as we face its trials. We can all learn how
to be better survivors, and in the process learn how best to face
everyday problems.
Since 1982, he has continued to voyage offshore, logging some 80,000
mostly trouble-free miles, although most of it has been shorthanded and
in deep waters where "Murphy usually proves to be an optimist because
not only what might go wrong usually does but even things that can't go
wrong often go wrong." But despite the challenges of wilderness
environments, Callahan is drawn to them, as he is to unusual and
challenging voyages and projects of all sorts. He accepts that anything
worth doing usually proves more difficult and time-consuming than one
could ever imagine beforehand, but that "fun isn't all it is cracked up
to be either," that nothing is the matter with fun but that true
fulfillment trumps it and usually comes from doing or trying to do
things a bit different or pushing the envelope.
Since even before graduating university with degrees in psychology and
philosophy, Callahan has always viewed boats, sailing, and the nuts and
bolts of material life as the tools we use to link us with the
conceptual, philosophical, even spiritual. He wrote in Adrift, "Some
people go to church; I go to sea." and the core of the book explores
man's relationship to nature, which he considers the real star of the
show. In Callahan's eyes, venturing in the wilderness is good survival
training, and the sea is the world's greatest wilderness. Such
environments, Callahan believes, heighten and reveal elements of human
character and society.
His approach has helped Callahan's writings, talks, illustrations, and
other work, even about the specialized world of boats and the sea,
become embraced by a wider public. Adrift has been published in 16
languages, won the Salon du Libre Maritime in France, was chosen as a
"best book of the 1980's" and "best book for young adults" by the
American Library Association, and one of the best adventure books of
all time by National Geographic Explorer. After 26 years, it remains in
print and is currently being translated into Chinese. Callahan also
authored Capsized, which chronicles the experience of four men trapped
on an overturned, half-flooded trimaran off of New Zealand for four
months in 1989, which has also been adapted for radio and stage as
Flipside by Ken Duncum. He has contributed to a dozen other books as
well, the majority on seamanship and survival, and spent four years at
Cruising World magazine, a New York Times publication, where he served
as senior editor. Callahan remains a frequent contributor to the
yachting press worldwide, but has also written for The New York Times,
The Boston Globe, High Technology, International Wildlife and
Ultrasport, among others.
Callahan also has continued to interview survivors and survival
experts, and to work as writer, consultant, equipment tester, and
designer. Callahan's books and experiences have been widely featured in
scores of media venues in more than a dozen countries, including
Reader's Digest and People magazines, the Tonight and Today shows,
Oprah Winfrey, Larry King, Voice of America, and NPR's All Things
Considered. He was the subject of a Heath Reading Video on ocean
survival for primary school children, and an NHK (Japan's Public
Broadcasting) television series on the human body. In the last few
years, he's been profiled on numerous programs aired in the U.S. via
the Discovery, History, and Biography Channels. Between 2009 and 2012,
for the film adaptation of Yann Martel's novel
Life of Pi (2012),
Academy-Award-winning director Ang Lee chose
Callahan to serve many roles, from providing script input and
consulting on numerous marine and survival issues, to designing and
making props and testing and directing operations of an enormous wave
tank, to, as Ang put it, "help us bring authenticity" to the film and
"help us make the ocean into a major character" in all its diversity,
rather than just a setting. Callahan could easily relate to Lee who he
feels also constantly challenges himself and all around him to tackle
new and interesting projects rather than remaking films that have been
made before. He also shares the notion that how we frame life's often
chaotic experiences is the way we make sense of them and give them
meaning, a core theme of
Life of Pi (2012).
Thirty years ago, Callahan found a wife, editor, and best mate in
Kathleen Massimini, a nurse, author, and editor originally from New
Orleans who also ventured to Maine where she fell in love with it's
dramatic coast and the sea. They met while she was building a wooden
cutter in the 1970s, and have logged many miles together since 1983.
Together they refit, lived aboard, and cruised a Carter 33 monohull,
sailing her in 1990 to 1991 from Maine to the Caribbean, as well as a
Cross 40 trimaran, Tryphena in Australia between 2002 and 2004. More
recently, they also built a home together from scratch and although
their travels have provided them with a feeling they have homes all
over the world, their home of homes remain in Maine where wildlife is
abundant and one can gaze at the stars at night.
of roofing tar and old roofing boards to use on a pond, Steven Callahan
has spent much of the his 60 years "messing about in boats." By age 12
was sailing out of sight of land. He taught himself the basics of boat
design and celestial navigation, and helped build a 40 footer prior to
graduating high school. As an adult, since 1974, he first built boats
before turning to designing boats, teaching design, and writing about
all aspects of the marine world. He's lived aboard for five years,
raced offshore, captained boat deliveries, and sailed more than 80,000
offshore miles, most shorthanded and much on unusual craft. These
experiences have inspired most of Callahan's creative work.
He is particularly keen on exploring and helping to bring to the public
the diversity, wonders, dangers, beauty, and sometimes horrors of the
offshore wilderness and survival experiences, especially since his own
survival voyage in 1982 when he lost his boat and spent two and a half
months "learning to live like an aquatic caveman" while drifting about
2,000 miles across the Atlantic. He is probably best known for his New
York Times best seller Adrift: Seventy Six Days Lost at Sea, which has
also been adapted for stage, based on that event.
Callahan uses his own and others' survival experiences to focus on the
common stages of survival, the successful strategies survivors employ
to adapt, and especially how challenges can ultimately serve as
opportunities. Survival is the universal human issue, but how we meet
it will vary widely. Callahan accepts that life will step on our toes,
that we will not emerge without scars, but he also embraces the idea
that we can learn to enhance our chances of survival and hopefully gain
at least as much as we lose as we face its trials. We can all learn how
to be better survivors, and in the process learn how best to face
everyday problems.
Since 1982, he has continued to voyage offshore, logging some 80,000
mostly trouble-free miles, although most of it has been shorthanded and
in deep waters where "Murphy usually proves to be an optimist because
not only what might go wrong usually does but even things that can't go
wrong often go wrong." But despite the challenges of wilderness
environments, Callahan is drawn to them, as he is to unusual and
challenging voyages and projects of all sorts. He accepts that anything
worth doing usually proves more difficult and time-consuming than one
could ever imagine beforehand, but that "fun isn't all it is cracked up
to be either," that nothing is the matter with fun but that true
fulfillment trumps it and usually comes from doing or trying to do
things a bit different or pushing the envelope.
Since even before graduating university with degrees in psychology and
philosophy, Callahan has always viewed boats, sailing, and the nuts and
bolts of material life as the tools we use to link us with the
conceptual, philosophical, even spiritual. He wrote in Adrift, "Some
people go to church; I go to sea." and the core of the book explores
man's relationship to nature, which he considers the real star of the
show. In Callahan's eyes, venturing in the wilderness is good survival
training, and the sea is the world's greatest wilderness. Such
environments, Callahan believes, heighten and reveal elements of human
character and society.
His approach has helped Callahan's writings, talks, illustrations, and
other work, even about the specialized world of boats and the sea,
become embraced by a wider public. Adrift has been published in 16
languages, won the Salon du Libre Maritime in France, was chosen as a
"best book of the 1980's" and "best book for young adults" by the
American Library Association, and one of the best adventure books of
all time by National Geographic Explorer. After 26 years, it remains in
print and is currently being translated into Chinese. Callahan also
authored Capsized, which chronicles the experience of four men trapped
on an overturned, half-flooded trimaran off of New Zealand for four
months in 1989, which has also been adapted for radio and stage as
Flipside by Ken Duncum. He has contributed to a dozen other books as
well, the majority on seamanship and survival, and spent four years at
Cruising World magazine, a New York Times publication, where he served
as senior editor. Callahan remains a frequent contributor to the
yachting press worldwide, but has also written for The New York Times,
The Boston Globe, High Technology, International Wildlife and
Ultrasport, among others.
Callahan also has continued to interview survivors and survival
experts, and to work as writer, consultant, equipment tester, and
designer. Callahan's books and experiences have been widely featured in
scores of media venues in more than a dozen countries, including
Reader's Digest and People magazines, the Tonight and Today shows,
Oprah Winfrey, Larry King, Voice of America, and NPR's All Things
Considered. He was the subject of a Heath Reading Video on ocean
survival for primary school children, and an NHK (Japan's Public
Broadcasting) television series on the human body. In the last few
years, he's been profiled on numerous programs aired in the U.S. via
the Discovery, History, and Biography Channels. Between 2009 and 2012,
for the film adaptation of Yann Martel's novel
Life of Pi (2012),
Academy-Award-winning director Ang Lee chose
Callahan to serve many roles, from providing script input and
consulting on numerous marine and survival issues, to designing and
making props and testing and directing operations of an enormous wave
tank, to, as Ang put it, "help us bring authenticity" to the film and
"help us make the ocean into a major character" in all its diversity,
rather than just a setting. Callahan could easily relate to Lee who he
feels also constantly challenges himself and all around him to tackle
new and interesting projects rather than remaking films that have been
made before. He also shares the notion that how we frame life's often
chaotic experiences is the way we make sense of them and give them
meaning, a core theme of
Life of Pi (2012).
Thirty years ago, Callahan found a wife, editor, and best mate in
Kathleen Massimini, a nurse, author, and editor originally from New
Orleans who also ventured to Maine where she fell in love with it's
dramatic coast and the sea. They met while she was building a wooden
cutter in the 1970s, and have logged many miles together since 1983.
Together they refit, lived aboard, and cruised a Carter 33 monohull,
sailing her in 1990 to 1991 from Maine to the Caribbean, as well as a
Cross 40 trimaran, Tryphena in Australia between 2002 and 2004. More
recently, they also built a home together from scratch and although
their travels have provided them with a feeling they have homes all
over the world, their home of homes remain in Maine where wildlife is
abundant and one can gaze at the stars at night.