Tuesday night, Rob took a turn for the worse. Dehydration and hypothermia were getting to him. He began to talk nonsense, talking about his wife back home. He was not married then, nor had he ever been. It was breaking our hearts. At times, he was only about half conscious. We knew he was dying. It became harder for him to sit on the boat, but not from the sheer discomfort of it. He was losing consciousness and he could not hold himself upright. We tried and tried to hold him up, but we were all very weak and could not continue. At one point, we tied him upright to the boat. He became so combative and began struggling so hard that we untied him. He calmed down and nodded off. We secured a line to him and let him drift along beside us, precious heat being slowly sucked out of him all the time. We knew he was going to be the first to die. We never talked about it, but we all knew it.
