In 1987, I had this idea that a great way to teach wilderness survival would be to head out into the woods and do exactly that.

Survive.

Now I need the skills because I'd be filming myself alone.

And you, the viewer, would be made aware of that.

And I thought, what a great way to make these skills more relatable to you.

Problem was, the technology was not available for me to film myself beyond the old grainy camcorders as we used to call them.

Well, fast forward to the year 2000, 13 years and indeed the technology became available.

the take home information.

And the skills that you would learn from this series would make you more confident in nature.

You'd stay warm, dry and safe, and therefore you'd be able to reconnect to the natural world.

What you're about to watch is raw and real, and not to be confused with reality television.

These are my journeys into the world of survival and around the planet.

These are the skills that can keep you alive and open the doors to nature.

The only reality that matters.

- I've got four cameras with me, a whole bunch of batteries, the tapes I need, the camera gear I need associated with that stuff.

And other than that, I've got the ocean.

(suspenseful music) Of all of the survival missions I've been on.

Experiences I've had and stories that I've shared with you.

There is only one where I would say, yeah, I will never do that again.

And this is it.

Now, I know there are hundreds of schools around the globe teaching great survival skills on weekends, shelter building and fire starting.

But I guarantee that none of them want to mess around with survival on a raft in the ocean.

- This time on Survivor Man, I'm heading to Central America and the country of Belize, a tropical paradise of the highest order.

But for this challenge, I won't be anywhere near land.

I'm heading out into the open ocean.

Like a castaway, I'm going to be set adrift in a life raft.

Left to the mercy of the wind and the sharks.

For seven days I'll be lost at sea without food or fresh water.

Only the searing tropical sun above me and the depths of the ocean below me.

(intense music) (intense music) My support crew and I are going to head way out into the open water where they'll set me adrift.

But before we left, I tested out what I thought would be the raft we would be using.

Life rafts are packed by the manufacturer, and have an expiration date printed on the case.

We found this one on a local yacht.

Even though it was six months past it's due date of being packed, it was considered by the yacht's owners to be ready for use.

(upbeat music) (water splashing) - Woo!

- Within only two minutes of a promising start, the plugs on the raft completely failed and it deflated.

What if this had been a real emergency?

Anyone attempting to use this raft would have been dead in the water.

(waves crashing) My support crew has found a replacement raft.

But there's no time to test it out.

I have flown, biked, driven, paddled, and helicoptered in to survival locations.

But somehow, sailing to where I must spend the next seven days surviving alone has a much more powerful feel to it.

More final.

Ford Lacko, my marine survival expert, and Frank Gagliano, my boat captain, tried to figure out the best place to drop me so they could follow my drift from afar.

They think that I can drift in the wind and current to group of small islands and if all goes right, I may be able to beach myself on one towards the end of the week.

- Just getting ready to toss this raft over, we're going to first disable the hydrostatic release.

This gadget here operates like a depth charge fuse.

If this yacht sinks, with no one ready to release it at about 10 feet underwater this would blow, release this hook, which flies back, raft comes up.

But the way we're launching it, we're gonna chuck it overboard.

So we'll do it manually.

- Sometimes if the vessel is sinking fast, the raft can inflate and get caught up in the rigging and be taken to the bottom of the ocean with the boat.

The raft was very heavy.

I dunno how anyone is expected to lift one by themselves while their boat is sinking and the storm is blowing.

It's been quite a problem for many people throughout history.

(water splashing) But the sailor's rule of thumb for life rafts is that you But the sailor's rule of thumb for life rafts is that you should only use it when you actually have to step up to climb in.

The raft opens upside down, a common occurrence.

Hopefully the few supplies it comes with haven't fallen out, have been soaked by saltwater.

In an emergency, a boat can take just seconds to sink.

You can't imagine how hard it must be to get into a raft like this in a heaving stormy sea at night.

On a quick check, it looks like the supplies haven't floated away, but they're all saturated with salt water.

Hopefully the bailor is still here.

- You're gone.

- Here goes Les.

- Now the crew needs me to drift alone.

They'll try to keep track of me throughout the week.

My fierce dehydration, sunstroke.

And sharks.

This is it.

This is it for real now.

Sure the reality's gonna sink in any minute now.

I just gotta take a moment just to figure out what it is I I just gotta take a moment just to figure out what it is I gotta do.

Well, actually, I know what it is.

The first thing I gotta do, is get all this water outta here.

Get myself as dry as possible, as quickly as possible.

- It's a great raft, but it's already leaking badly through the floor, which means I'll be bailing constantly.

(suspenseful music) Well, I'm completely alone now.

The potential for something to go wrong is very high.

It's great risk in doing this.

I've gotta shadow boat with me.

Now, they can't chit chat with me on the radio, but they've gotta monitor my safety all week long.

I'm quite nervous about it all.

For now, the seas are relatively calm, but there's so much openness surrounding so much water.

It's easy to become overwhelmed by the immense ocean.

Well, it's not hard to figure out what you do in a situation like this.

I mean, you either want to try and attract attention by signaling somehow, or you want to hit land.

Obviously I'm not gonna be trying to attract attention.

What I'm gonna hope for is that there are keys, little islands basically, that I might land on with this, and I can try to make that happen by playing with the sea anchor like a parachute on a long line sent out.

And it helps to keep the raft stable and keep it from flipping over 'cause it pulls down and can slow your progress as well.

So I might wanna pull it up if I wanna try and speed up and hit an island.

(upbeat music) All right, well let's take a look at the construction of this raft.

These rafts have got two separate tubes to keep the flotation happening, as well as an arch to give me my roof.

They color it on the inside all blue because they believe that's a more calming color and they also feel that it does help to stop seasickness.

Got a zipper out the back of it to help air go through.

And also a rain catch.

It's not attached right now, but this is the water bladder.

This little tube attaches to the rain catch.

Now, just about every shipwreck survivor, anybody had to spend time at sea in a life raft, complained about constant air leaks or constant water leaks complained about constant air leaks or constant water leaks from the bottom of their raft.

from the bottom of their raft.

Just so happens I've got both.

(air pumping) The only way I could make this work and film it too.

Is tie on a little rubber dinghy to go with me.

It'll be a place where I can put most of my camera gear.

Wind has died right down and the sun is going down.

Soon it'll be dusk, which has the horrible nickname of "The Sharking Hour."

Sharks get much more active at dusk than at dawn when they're feeding.

I think what I'm gonna have to do for the night is climb into the little blue dinghy.

Spend the night in there dry.

Survivors often have both a life raft and a dinghy as an emergency backup.

There's so much water in my raft that I'm going to sleep in the open dinghy to try to stay dry.

That's mostly home.

And I guess this is the bedroom.

I don't think I could be up in here in the heat of the day.

I'd just be scorched by that sun.

But right now the sun lost its strength and it's going down.

It's nice to get in here and get dry.

I feel like I'm a lot lower to the water.

It feels a lot more vulnerable.

I feel a lot more vulnerable.

Pretty hard, I think, no matter who you are, to not be in a situation like this and just be thinking about sharks constantly.

I don't care how tough you are, man.

This is not an easygoing situation.

(mellow music) You know, I've slept in deserts, jungles, swamps, You know, I've slept in deserts, jungles, swamps, the arctic, tops of mountains.

But out here in the middle of the ocean like this, But out here in the middle of the ocean like this, it's by far the eeriest it's ever felt.

It's not much between me and the ocean.

Little bit of rubber.

That's about it.

It's day two of my seven days lost at sea.

There's only a few square feet of rubber raft protecting me from the perils on the depths of the ocean.

I'm gonna do a spin around and show you what I can see.

That's it.

Before it gets too windy and too wavy out here, and before that sun gets too high and intense, it's already getting pretty warm, maybe what I'll do is, I'll show you what I have for supplies.

Now in this situation, I wanted to go with the supplies that came with the raft and find out what we got.

Something really interesting happened when the raft opened up upside down, well, water got into everything.

I mean, and you see it's surprising how, I don't know.

Unwaterproof the stuff was.

That is the actual bag, which is not a waterproof bag.

The top was just open.

Okay, now this is something that I have myself.

This didn't come with the kit, emergency navigation chart.

I may be able to use it for figuring out where I am.

Okay, these are three hand flares and once again, water got into them and I could feel them reacting with the water they were getting hot, internally hot.

Waterproof flashlight.

It doesn't work.

Okay, first aid kit.

I have added a multi-tool.

I brought a pair of goggles.

I'll tell you why.

With a pair of goggles, might be able to dive for some fish or some conch shells or something like that.

We've got the blue dinghy and the raft.

(suspenseful music) All right.

I'm gonna pull up the sea anchor, the drogue, because it would be nice if I could slip behind some of the small islands that I'm passing and if I pull up the drogue, it'll lessen the drag in the water and help me to move a little faster, possibly into a better position than I am right now.

'Cause I'm pretty exposed out here.

It can go either way.

Drifting at a couple of knots, I could easily travel as far as 50 miles a day.

On the other hand, without wind or strong current, I could bob around like a cork in one place, fry under the relentless tropical sun.

So here I am, set adrift in a very, very big ocean.

Sorry, it's hard to talk.

I have to keep looking at the horizon so I don't start to feel too seasick.

It's been hours and my safety boat is nowhere to be seen.

All right, you wanna see the cold hard reality of this?

Susan calling Talisman.

Susan calling Talisman.

Susan calling Talisman.

Susan is the name of the raft, by the way.

No answer.

This is our high powered VHF.

Susan calling Talisman.

Susan calling Talisman.

No answer.

Which means that at this very moment, anything could go wrong to me here, right here and now.

And they wouldn't be able to hear my cries for help.

(GPS beeping) - This is the boat down here.

Les is somewhere out in here.

We're not quite sure where.

- I do not read you anymore, Talisman.

I do not read you anymore.

Over.

(mellow music) - [Man] Survivorman, Survivorman.

(radio static) This is Talisman, do you read me?

- Talisman, this is Susan.

I read you loud and clear, over.

(indistinct speech over radio) - Finally, after hours of no visual in this thick haze, the safety boat does a pass by to check and see if I'm still alive.

Waves are calming down and I guess night is coming in.

The raft has bad leaks both in the floor and the air chambers, causing me to bail and reinflate every 20 minutes.

I'll need to climb into the blue dingy that is my camera platform.

The raft is leaking.

It's like just sitting in a big warm bathtub.

Climbed into the dinghy so I can get up and get dry from the dinghy.

It really is gonna be a long, long night.

My life jacket is on in case I roll out of the dinghy in my sleep.

Then, without warning, sudden rain squall hits.

Okay, well... I finally, I just climbed in here.

I'm soaking wet now, of course.

Finally, as I get myself organized, get the camera turned on, it stops raining.

But good news is, it rained enough that I got some fresh water caught in the rain catch.

Probably gonna be salty a bit, but most of it is fresh water.

Actually, no, it's hardly any salt water in it all.

It doesn't taste very good though, coming off the plastic.

Oh.

That's nice.

Nice to get the fresh water though.

(wind blowing and rain falling) Raining again.

It's the middle of the night.

(peaceful music) - Survivorman has gone six miles from the place he was dumped into the sea.

But he probably covered 20 miles throughout the night going in circles, unfortunately.

So that's gotta be the maddening part of it.

For a while, you see a lighter, you see a piece of land and then it starts to disappear.

(eerie music) (seagulls chirping) - That was a long night.

And you know, it's really hard to tell, but when you look at the islands, I have a feeling that I drifted one way in the night and maybe even drifted back out again.

Cause the breeze has changed.

There's one sort of big island I can see, and the breezes changed.

It's now blowing me away from that.

That island.

I interchange keys and islands down here.

They call 'em keys or islands.

Really doesn't matter.

(Les yawning) - I've got little fish that have decided to make the bottom side of my raft home.

That could be good.

Well, good in that I might be able to make a meal of them.

Bad in that, that they are a floating meal for larger fish and eventually sharks.

So at this point, as my captain so eloquently put it, I am now part of the food chain.

Dolphin just swam within just feet of me.

No doubt checking me out.

That was cool.

I'm glad to see him so close to me.

I mean, he passed by within feet.

A dolphin is a good sign.

They have been known to even protect swimmers from massive great white sharks.

You know, a lone survivor is at a grave, grave disadvantage.

There's no one to help.

There's no one to tease me out of fear.

There's no one that I could even be brave, courageous for.

No one to talk to.

Except maybe this fly.

It is just dead still.

And I didn't even know I could get like this out in the ocean.

But it's dead still.

Nothing's moving.

There's no wind, no air.

Sun's beating down.

I'm not moving anywhere.

This is getting steamy and dangerously hot.

I may be in the middle of a vast ocean, but this heat and the thick haze have conspired to make me feel very claustrophobic.

While I battle heatstroke, my whole world consists of these two pieces of inflated rubber.

It's very hazy, but you can still get burned badly through this kind of cloud cover.

I'm seeing all kinds of wicked heat lightning, at some point in this night the storm could come upon me and really buck it down.

After days of bobbing around on the ocean, the solid ground feels amazing.

People have been here and cleared out this area here for shelter.

But I gotta be really careful.

If I get to the point where I'm not sweating, that's very dangerous.

I look down about a three and a half foot shark I look down about a three and a half foot shark swam right by me.

Cold hard reality of just about everywhere on the planet, can always find garbage of some sort.

It's really coming down out there.

I'm just blowing like crazy.

Directly inspired by his own survival expeditions, journeys and challenges.

World renowned survival instructor Les Stroud brings you survive, essential skills and tactics to get you out of anywhere alive.

Available for 19.99.

In addition, the book will to live Dispatches from the Edge of Survival is available, featuring Les Stroud's own top ten survival stories of all time.

21.99.

To order, please go to lesstroud.ca, and click on shop