Chapter 4: Salvaging

They had survived!

Justin was soggy and cold, but at least he was alive and unhurt. So were his mother and the other passengers from the sailboat. The previous night’s storm had thrown their sail boat against a rocky outcropping just off shore. They managed to scramble ashore as the winds and rain abated.

The captain and her teenage nephew were scouting the beach for useful debris from their shipwreck. Random bags and boxes had floated onshore near them. The boat lay in ruins on the rocks. It finally struck Justin that they were shipwrecked for real. Three weeks earlier Justin had begun planning for the start of his 8^th grade year. Then, out of the blue, his mother told him that they were going on a chartered Caribbean sailing trip with people he didn’t know. While on this trip, a storm overtook the ship. And now here he was, stranded with his shipmates. It felt like some bad t.v. movie plot.

Justin’s mother held onto him silently. Jesse, the weather guy, stood up to help the captain. The three college students, a guy and two women, sat huddled against a stone. Justin could hear the captain speaking with her nephew and Jesse, but the rest of them just stayed silent.

The Captain, her nephew and Jesse came towards them with several sacks salvaged from the ship. 

“Look” she said, “we have to accept the fact that we’re stuck here on this island until we can figure a way get off. Jake, Jesse and I were talking and we think we should explore this place. An island this big has to be inhabited by people somewhere. There must be some sort of town or something over in that direction.”  She pointed up over the red clay cliffs to the green mountains. “We’ll split up into two groups: Jake, Justin and Cynthia will go with me with up the beach and out over that pass in the distance. Jesse, Jeanie, Marge and Miguel: you guys will head up over there, “she pointed to what looked like a crack in the cliffs that formed a sort of pathway up into the mountains. Justin saw Miguel get all serious, even a little bothered, by what the captain said, but kept quiet.

The Captain and Jesse both emptied out the sacks they had carried over to the group. Out fell rope, food packages, canteens and random other items they had deemed useful. Jesse took up one of the empty sacks and said, “These sacks can be fashioned into a sort of backpack. We’ll split up these items between the two groups. We figure that when one of the groups finds civilization, it can send out one of these flares.” He held one up to show them. 

“This is getting more like a silly t.v. show every minute,” Miguel muttered. Jesse ignored the comment and continued. Everyone else started to divvy up the stuff between the two sacks. Jesse approached Justin with two large canteens and a cup. 

“Hey Justin, I have this task for you. In this first canteen I emptied a liter bottle of water. In this other is a liter of Gatorade. Both of the bottles were starting to break.  We want to split the liquids up evenly between the two groups but we only have these two canteens to carry them. We’ll have to mix every thing up.”

“How will we know he’ll do it fairly,” interrupted Miguel with some severity. Justin grew a little nervous at Miguel’s apparent mistrust of him.

“That’s easy,” replied Jesse. “All you have to do, Justin, is pour out a cup of this Gatorade, mix it into the water canteen, then pour out a cup of that mix and put it back into the original Gatorade canteen. Both canteens will have not only the same amount of liquid, but also the same concentration.”

Your task: Is Jesse correct? If this is true, does this method work for any volume. If false, is there a better way to do this with the materials available to them?