119 Days Upside Down; Trapped Inside the Capsized Rose-Noëlle | E258
About this episode
The episode recounts the harrowing survival story of four men trapped in a capsized trimaran for 119 days.
At 6 AM on June 4, 1989, a wave the skipper estimated at sixty feet flipped the trimaran Rose-Noëlle upside down off New Zealand’s East Cape, trapping four men — a self-taught sailor sleeping aboard everything he owned, a builder on his first trip abroad, a young outdoorsman, and a cook who had never sailed — in an air pocket the width of a 54-inch mattress. Their distress beacon blinked for nine days into an empty sky, the search concentrated hundreds of miles away, and New Zealand’s Water Safety Council listed all four as drowned. For 119 days they rationed salvaged soft drink and slowly ripening kiwifruit, rigged a rainwater catchment, and speared fish drawn to the barnacle reef their own wreck was becoming, while unusual winds carried them in a wide loop back toward home. Then they washed ashore on Great Barrier Island, cleaned themselves up, and walked into a country whose investigators suspected a drug run. The evidence that finally backed up their story may be the strangest witness in survival history. Time Stamps: 00:00 Podcast Intro 00:30 Calm Before Capsize 02:20 Meet The Crew 07:19 Storm Decisions 10:08 Rogue Wave Hits 12:34 Life Inside Hull 13:55 Beacon Hope Fades…
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- 15-Year-Old Alone on Kit Carson Peak: A 200-Foot Fall | E262
- Lost in the Outback for 43 Days: The Man Who Didn't Want to be Found | E261
- The 1967 Denali Disaster: 7 Climbers Trapped Above 19,000 Feet | Disaster Strikes E 260
- A Four-Hour Float, Three Days Lost | E 259
- Forbidden Island, Certain Death: He Swam to Shore Anyway | Disaster Strikes
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