Genesis (2) - September 13, 1956 - S1-E2
Deliberate mistake: When Sam ejects and lands on the ground, the closeup is a flipped shot, note the "US Air Force" is backwards on Sam's helmet. (00:19:10)
Genesis (2) - September 13, 1956 - S1-E2
Continuity mistake: When Sam ejects from the X-2 and parachutes to safety, he lands on the desert floor and the chute comes down on top of him, covering him completely. In the very next shot, we see him lying face up and the parachute has entirely disappeared.
Answer: Sam threw items off the raft to lighten the load, so it wouldn't sink, in doing so he made the raft less heavy. Which made easier to float with the currents, if it was heavy the raft would have moved slower and not moved so far.
Except that Al said that immediately after throwing stuff out of the boat four hours passed and it was shown that they didn't really move from where they were. They were still in the same spot. Forgot to ask this too. When Sam and Vanessa are stranded on the island, one of them, can't remember who, did something and when Al appears, he tells them that because of it, time had suddenly skipped several more hours and if the event hadn't been interrupted, they would have been rescued by a boat. So, what happened on the island that once again caused time to speed up? It seems kind of strange that time could move so quickly on the island, especially since it was still day time and it never showed any sort of changes like the sun or clouds moving.