.
Just how big is Pi’s lifeboat?
“It was three and a half feet deep, eight feet wide and twenty-six feet long, exactly. I know this because it was printed on one side of the side benches in black letters. It also said that the lifeboat was designed to accommodate a maximum of thirty-two people. Wouldn’t that have been merry, sharing it with so many? Instead we were three and it was awfully crowded…” (p.137)
Here is a rough approximation of what this would look like:
Now imagine a fully grown zebra (the size of a fairly decent horse), an orangutan (think a particularly broad-shouldered body-builder), a hyena (a large dog) and a three-meter-long adult Bengal tiger in this space, with you perched at the very end.
With sharks all around.
Welcome to the setting of part 2 of Life of Pi…
