Rogue wave flips trimaran in the Pacific - Rose Noelle 1989

[Music] a lot of the general public still have a bit of a scratch of the head about this one the rose Noel from 1989 let's talk first of all about the boat that saved them the boat was a 40t fiberglass traran she had been designed and built by her owner n Skipper John Glenny he had a bit of experience with triar actually he' built one when he was in his 20s he'd done a boat building Apprentice ship he and his brother sold their motorbikes and funded the backyard construction of a smallish Cher in called The Highlight which they taught themselves to sail and with pretty much no equipment whatsoever they sailed around the Pacific as far as America and eventually sold her before making the way back to Australia where they decided they'd do it all again they built identical triar ends this time they'd learned a lot about what you do and don't want in a boat cruising the Pacific this was John glenny's dream boat and he lavished care and attention on it he made it strong he made it very comfortable but the trouble with a traran is if you flip one of those over it's not going to get back on its feet unless an equal catastrophe overtakes her to reverse the original catastrophe she hadn't done a lot she'd been launched in Sydney she' undergone a delivery voyage across to Picton and John Glenny was in a bit of a hurry he'd joined a cruising Association up in the islands he'd been away from the islands too long he felt it was a spiritual home and he just couldn't wait to get back there so there was a big regetta planned in Tonga and he was desperate to get up there so he sailed to pton his intention there was to raise a crew as quickly as possible basically his mates and then he would set off forth with none of his mates could just walk away from their lives quite as easily as he could he was a Accused by one of his co-s survivors of this whole thing of being a kind of Peter Pan figure and it's probably quite accurate he um seems to have been pretty averse to forming commitments in his life he had a string of conquests across the Pacific that's the kind of person he was but not everyone was able just to drop everything and go off sailing to the islands like him a bit of a South Pacific hippie that's exactly what he was he doesn't seem to have settled down as he got older either the rose Noel incidentally was named after a tahan beauty she was a Miss July whom he had met at Rota in the Tahiti group he was back in Sydney and she sent him word that she was traveling out to see him and she bordered a penam flight in Tahiti and it crashed upon takeoff although there was one Survivor she was not that Survivor he named The Rose Noel after her the last Voyage of course of the Rose Noel was from Picton who was on board why who knew whom as I've noted John Glenny the skipper was desperate to get a crew and just get going as quickly as as possible he met a fellow by the name of Phil Hoffman who was a retired or rather had been made redundant employee of the power Department who was in The Yacht next door at the Mariner at Pickton Phil was living on a pharoh concrete boat with his wife yeah he just got chatting to John Glenny and John's stories just set that fire going really most people who live aboard their boats have dreams of sailing them around the world and doing exactly what John Glenny had done with his youth when Glenny asked him whether he wanted to come with him it was too much to resist so Phil went home the yacht next door asked his wife Karen whether he could go and she said she sort of shrugged and said why not as long as the boat's safe so Phil signed on and helped in the preparations of the boat it was difficult to raise the other two people he felt he needed to take the boat he' designed the rose Noel to be sailed two-handed but he decided for the sake of a comfortable and safe passage it would be better if he had two complete Watchers aboard so two lots of two people he needed those extra two people so he advertised he asked around and eventually word got to Outward Bound where there was a fellow by the name of Rick hell Regal working he was 31 an ex cop and an Outward Bound instructor he was a cancer survivor 3 years previously he had been diagnosed with a brain tumor and given two years to live after radiotherapy the brain tumor disappeared and he was getting on with his life he was a bit of an alpha male as most of those Outward Bound types are and there I say ex cops but they didn't really have time to get to know each other before he was signed on as well a couple of days later Rick showed up with a mate of his who was a cook at Outward Bound and this was a young American by the name of Jim NPA who was an ex drug addict from Minnesota he had been working at Outward Bound as aook surrounded by all these adventuring types he wondered what he was doing with his life and when this opportunity for adventure was floated before him he thought I'm in on that that's the crew they didn't know each other John Glenny was a bit nervous about the tight connection as he saw it between Jim and Rick he had been advised by someone with much experience in Blu water sailing that you didn't sign husbands and wives into your crew and you didn't get mates along either because there's a pre-existing relationship there that might take priority over what needs to be done on the boat throw people into a boat especially if things get hairy and aspects of people's personalities begin to emerge and unless you know them pretty well you can't predict what's going to happen so really you need to fall back on the basic understanding that this is my boat what I say goes it would have been a very close connection with the boat itself because he'd built it and it was his dream boat and it was his home as well he lived aboard this boat and it sort of represented his aspirations for the future as well there was a whole lot of emotion at stake for Glenny in this boat it's fair to say this wasn't a shoddy boat and he wasn't Reckless at all seems John Glenny had had set n all the bells and whistles she was very well set up she had lots of safety features she had a VHF which is basically used for ship-to-shore or ship-to ship contact over short distances and he had a ham radio aboard as well an amateur radio and you can talk to anyone anywhere in the world on one of those but he didn't have a license so he had that aboard as a last resort emergency thing he had an eerb an emergency position indicator relay or radio Beacon basically the of that was just to send a signal to a satellite which would relay it to a listening station by using various satellites all picking up the same signal could get a very accurate fix on where that Beacon had been set off but they were in their infancy at this stage and so was the network that listened for them and this become significant he's experienced it's a stable boat he's got everything on board for all safety considerations what could possibly go wrong John what could possibly go wrong and when they put this question to him before they went as anxious spouses insisted they did his crew were just met with dismissive answers really this boat's Unsinkable she can't go wrong modern triin cannot flip she's made of polystyrene foam sandwiched and fiberglass so even if she breaks apart the bits are going to float so this boat is Unsinkable kamw May Glenny had enormous faith in his boat and the others were persuaded to have enormous faith in him they departed on June the 1st winter I suppose but it doesn't really matter from pikon They delayed a couple of days because there was a big southernly storm blowing through after a couple of days the forast suddenly turned good and off they went they had a absolutely routine first couple of days they blasted through Strait at a rate of about 16 knots which is hoofing and then turned the corner at Cape palisa and began heading up the WIA Coast everything was pretty good they even struck a cal spell and they were beamed for a little while with the WIA Coast still in view but then another souly storm blew up this one put The Frighteners up them it was accompanied with enormous waves it was bitterly cold and let's bear in mind that Phil had sailing experience in fact he lived on a boat so he was comfortable with boats Rick didn't noded Jim Jim had absolutely no experience he' never steered a boat in his life before he's got an inexperienced crew around him and when things cut up rough on day three in this big storm Glenny finds himself having to do most of the steering because the others either are unwilling or they're just not up to it he pretty much exhausts himself on that third day that night the first cracks in everything begin to show the waves are blasting up behind the boat the boat's speeding down the face of them if you don't steer correctly you'll go side on on brooch where the wind and the waves are all trying to push the boat over for some of these guys who had never really been out of sight of land and they never been aboard a boat this fast they knew themselves they couldn't steer it in these conditions and the guy who could was getting pretty tired their Faith was beginning to weaken and the first to really go was Phil from this point on his Shipmates began to hate Phil because he began muttering as a kind of a MRA oh God we're going to flip oh God we're going to flip oh God we're going to flip he went and buckled himself into his bunk which was just this tiny sort of squeeze hole towards the back of the boat and he also suffered from claustrophobia so his MRA became I've got to get out of here we're going to flip I've got to get out of here we're going to flip not the kind of conversation that's going to soothe the nerves of those around them they did flip they did it's glenny's fault because he should have known better but he was persuaded by his crew really to stream a kind of sea anchor behind the boat first of all to try to slow her down but it didn't have much discernable effect and because he was past being able to steare any longer he was just exhausted and no one else was going to take over the crew persuaded him to stream a larger sea anchor and to drop the sails and basically lie a hole which means no sails up nose of the ship to the Sea so that she rides it out properly and just wait out the storm glenny's strong preference was to keep sailing through it this was not on the scale of the storms he'd been through and lesser qualified boats so he would far have preferred to sail through it but he streamed the sea anchor and then the sea anchor failed them and the effect of this was that for as much of the time as it was keeping their nose to the wind it was dragging them sideways and that's the worst possible position when you've got these big swells coming through that's mistake number one streaming the thing in the first place mistake number two it had cost him 800 bucks and he was buggered if he was going to cut a drift an $800 piece of cat so he left it there it being too dangerous to try to retrieve it so all night they were going side on to the waves and they were nearly flipped two or three times where waves would pick them up and stand them on their beam ends standing side on on the water the guys trying to sleep in the main cabin were sort of flung out of their bunks and gear was going everywhere and it was just generally pretty bloody terrifying and then of course towards 6:00 in the morning the storm dropped storm went away stopped blowing the crests of the Waves which were being whipped to a foam were smooth everything looked good the sea was abating but then a rogue wave came this can always happen if you've got two different swell patterns converging then two waves can reinforce one another so you can have 10t waves and then suddenly a 20 30ft wave comes through and that's what happened they heard it come with the Roar of as they've described it a freight train next thing they were standing on their heads that the boat had flipped the ceiling of the boat was now the floor and the floor was now the ceiling and I take it no one was on Deck no the lives of anyone who might have been on Deck were saved because they were all down below anyone who had been on Deck would have been killed as it was they were lucky I suppose to escape injury because two of them at least were in the main cabin and were flung right across it they smashed into the dining room table on the way the other two were a bit luckier because they were squeezed into the after cabins where there wasn't room to be flung anywhere really but of course water starts flooding into the boat Phil who was already on the edge of panic to everyone surprise he's quite a big guy with cat-like agility sprang from his tiny bunk and kicked the Companion Way hatch out and that had the effect of increasing the inflow of water and also to sweep a whole lot of gear that was floating around out of the vessel which with the benefit of hindsight was a very bad development in their situation Mr popular yes Mr popular gets even more popular what do you do now well it's a hopeless situation really probably the worst thing was that John Glenny had been saying when anyone asked him directly or anyone said in his hearing the boat's going to flip he'd said this boat can't flip basically he staked his entire reputation his entire credibility on this one assertion this cannot flip the boat flipped so your Skipper has no credibility any longer and in fact he's not in command of anything any longer and his nose was rubbed in this fact several times in the next few days but what they essentially have to do now is make do with what they've got they've got one area of the boat of the interior of the boat which is not underwater and that's the after cabin underneath the cockpit this is an area about the size of a double bed so there's plenty of room for people to stretch out and lie there but the problem is it's only 18 in high and there are four of them worse it's semi submerged there's enough water slopping in and out of it that you cannot stay dry if you're just lying on the bare deck so what they needed to do is just cram gear in there and then stuff anything they could in the way of hatch covers tabletops and what have you in there to make a sleeping platform and that kept them mostly dry they had a couple of foam mattresses such as trampers use and that was their only comfort lying on the hard assortment of objects like tabletops and what have you is it Pitch Black it's Pitch Black it's still 6: in the morning when all this has happened and it's the middle of winter so it's still dark but what light would be in the cabin at first the setav set was lighting it the screen of the satnav satellite navigation that is it's the Forerunner to GPS it takes periodic fixers to give you a sort of rough idea of where you are but there's a lot of uncertainty there was a hell of a lot of uncertainty with their set NV because shortly after it went up upside down it then went out as the electrics shorted once that dim orange light had gone there was just nothing they were in the dark and they had no means of lighting it given they had no torches and the ship's own lighting was inoperable due to the water this is a perilous position now fresh water first of all they are quite happy about the fresh water situation they've got 360 L and three tanks around the boat so they don't even think about shortage of water they're completely relaxed food they've got a heap of it they've got enough for a year which Glenny has stashed there because long after he's made his regetta and kissed his companions goodbye he's going to keep cruising the Pacific and food's much cheaper to buy in pikon than it is in your average Pacific island so he's crammed as much aboard as he can food and water not a problem they also have the eerb uh they haven't lost track of that they know where it is uh in fact uh the night before they capsized one of the crew members who was so alarmed at their situation had got the eerb uh out of the place where it was stowed and lashed it to the cabin table can you tell people what the eerb is again the eerb is an emergency position indicating relay Beacon basically a radio and all it does is it sends out a single unbroken signal like a dial tone that's relayed by satellite to listening stations and by using more than one satellite they can triangulate and work out precisely where it is you flick a switch and it starts transmitting and this of course is what they did they flicked the switch on the eerb the little rear in red light came on and so they expected to be rescued 5 days they have the means to survive they're psychologically prepared for it to be a short wait for rescue unfortunately the whole bunch of things converge as they usually do in disasters to ensure that they're not rescued on June the 5th an arrangement that John Glenny had with someone back in Pickton to relay weather information to him worked against them because Jim Bramwell who was the man doing that picked up a weak signal on his amateur radio that that he thought might be from the rose Noel it gave a position but didn't identify the calling station which was quite in accordance with what Glenny said he would do because he didn't want to be done for not having a license for his radio so he recorded the position and plotted it on the chart so he had this idea that the rose Noel was actually 300 nautical miles north of her actual position he received another signal a few days later very similar and having made the expected amount of progress on from that initial position and so he ched that as well when people came and knocking on his door asking whether he heard from the rose Noel he said well I might have heard from them and if I did then this is where they are that was unfortunate the other unfortunate thing is the e-erb signal was not heard in order to be heard someone had to be looking out for it and at that stage New Zealand didn't have a dedicated station listening fulltime for eerb signals we do now largely as a result of this what it relied on in those days really was for an aircraft or another ship to pass within range but it was noted that an eerb set off similar model eerb set off and similar circumstances somewhere else in the world wasn't detected until a searching plane passed within 10 nautical miles so someone had to be passing very close to them in order to detect them at this stage they're 140 nautical miles east of Castle point they're in a part of the ocean where no one goes planes don't go there aircraft are leaving from Oakland even if they're heading to South America they're well to the north so there are no black hole as far as eerb goes as well not that they know it they expect that little red light on their transmitter is going to bring Salvation very shortly what's life like on board now it's a psychological battle and they're not exactly a tight-nit group anyway they hate Phil because Phil's a misery guts he gave himself up for lost even before they kept sized and now that they've kept sized he's just waiting for the end to come Rick of course he's an action man he's a cop was a cop he's an Outward Bound instructor he's used to taking control and just basically using strength and resourcefulness to extricate himself from situations can't be done here they're powerless and for an action man that's the worst possible situation they're lucky in many ways they've got this young guy Jim NPA there because although he doesn't blow his own trumpet John Glenny gives him a lot of credit for being the Diplomat and the one who manages to smooth over the constant conflict between Glenny especially and Rick the two are sort of like alpha male goats butting their heads together quite commonly when someone was hungry they'd reach for some food because they're expecting to be rescued there's no thought of rationing so they'd Reach Out grab some food Glenny made it a practice to say anyone else want some food while I'm grabbing some the others would usually accept when Rick reached for food he' just grab it and he wouldn't think of his companions at all and Glenny more than once called him on this and whereas the others if they were accused of the same thing would apologize Rick wouldn't he'd just say everything changed when this boat flipped over you can imagine what that did for interpersonal relations between him and Glenny the trouble is their unflippable boat now that it's flipped is unflippable they're stuck like this unless they caught in another storm which is going to knock them upright again they've built the sleeping platform in their tiny cramped confined space and should the boat flip again then they're going to be buried under everything they've built their sleeping platform out of and there's only one means of getting in or out of this compartment and it's this tiny little aperture that you have to squeeze yourself in 2 fet first in order to get in and it's off center so everyone else is off to one side of the entrance only one person is going to be able to make a timely exit once they've extricated themselves from all the gear so this is another nagging fear that the boat going upright again is going to be their worst nightmare whereas you would think it would be their salvation I have to ask what about we and poos they're a bit Cy about poos um I think they must have used a backet and checked it out what they did is they cut holes in the in the hole trar commonly have Escape hatches anyway just against this possibility that they flip over most oceangoing triar will have an escape hatch in the main Hill when Phil was telling his mates down the Boozer that he was setting off into the Pacific on the Trier end the rose Noel everyone said oh we know that boat doesn't have Escape hatches multi holes are notorious for flipping and he doesn't have Escape hatches they catch the Escape hatches that probably should have been there anyway and that was their means of getting out at first of course it was too stormy and they didn't but then after four or 5 days the storm blew out and they were able to get out onto the top side and at least stretch their legs get a bit of sun and presumably dispose of their waist they just peed in the water in the cabin and they had a um coffee jar which they used as a sort of bed pan the storm finally blew out on the 9th so there had been 5 days in that situation still not sure whether the ship was going to flip over again and that all be drowned down below things didn't really begin improving for them for better part of a month they managed to get out and spread a v flag on on the hull which has a bright orange flag with a black v on it one of the internationally recognized distress signals apparently that raised Spirits enormously because they thought they couldn't be missed from the air they worked out a system whereby one person would keep watch they'd shove their head out like a Mir Cat every now and then and have a look around in case there was anything sailing past the water was 12 to 15° very cold they nicknamed the odd Rogue Wave which would come from nowhere out of the dark and just drench that person who was on watch they nicknamed them it became a source of great Amusement to someone the the scream of oh bloody hell that's cold and then some Soden figure would crawl back into their crawl space shivering they're on the verge of hypothermia funnily enough had they not been four of them in this tiny cramped space they probably would have succumbed to hypothermia the only thing going for Phil that seemed to be was that he was like a human furnace as one of them wrote he just seemed unnaturally warm and so whenever you were cold you snuggled out with Phill it was a mixed blessing because he had scraggly fine hair and that seemed to get up your nose when you were goinging to get to sleep and he also had this habit of curling his toes and raking them down the backs of your legs he was claustrophobic so he Flatout refused to be the farthest person from the exit of their little cabin so John Glenny offered to take his turn each time it ought to have been his turn to be there otherwise they rotated their positions if one person had to roll over everyone had to roll over because there just wasn't room for one person to perform that maneuver themselves you begin to get a picture of just how four niggly desperate people cold hungry and increasingly thirsty would be finding this now you said there was enough food for a year the trouble is access to the food what's happening is John Glenny seems to be the only one who is willing to dive for it he had to dive in his own cabin he's best qualified because he knew the layout of the boat and where things were stowed so perhaps it made sense that he should do it but he did resent it at times that job fell to him but he would Dive In The mky Water the water needless to say that had been urinating in it uh gets flushed regularly every time a wave comes along it washes through the boat so it's flushed but on the other hand a lot of the food is disintegrating into the water and making it very very murky there's flour there's wheat bicks there's all that kind of stuff so it's a horrible job going down into the mck to try to find food on the 13th of June after they'd run out of juice and milk Glenny decided that it was time they tapped the fresh water tanks so he went up to one of the filler holes odly wondering what he would do when he took the cap off with 140 L of water above him how he was going to shove that cap back in it turns out he needn't have worried because when he took the filler cap off nothing came out oh he said oh no which the others heard and then he went to another tank opened it same thing then he went to the third tank opened it and he already knew what had happened by now and the same thing had happened his comrades were absolutely beside themselves over what his oh no signified he calmly told them that the fresh water tanks had breather tubes in them so that as water was drawn out air would replace it of course invert the tank and the water just runs straight out they had not a drop of fresh water left aboard how long have they been in this situation now yeah this is 13th of June so this is 9 days after they turn Turtle they've been living as though there's no tomorrow really up to this point it's outside the window they thought rescue should have arrived in so it's beginning to Dawn on them that they might be alive in this and it's also beginning to Dawn on them that too late as far as water's concerned but as far as food's concerned they're going to have to be very careful with how they dispense it we're talking just a little over a week they would suffer this and even find a way to celebrate day one they've begun rationing things and of course these guys aren't getting along so rationing becomes a bit of a mission in itself at first what they did is they'd pour say a bowl of mule with a sliced up Apple and then they would each take a spoonful the trick was to try to load your spoon as heavily as you could so that you were technically still having one spoonful and get it all in your mouth without wasting any this just set off enormous bickering every time and Phil especially accused the others of getting more food than them because they had bigger mouths that's the kind of thing that was going on so EV eventually they had a bowl each and they would with everyone watching like Hawks load each bowl with the ration so that there could be no dispute over who was getting more but even then and even though they're in this desperate situation the way that John Glenny used to use his finger to get the last morels of food out of his bowl and then even lick his bowl used to get right up Rick's nose because it was just not good table manners just these little things once they start getting up your nose you just can't seem to let them go it does become quite desperate I mean they're there for months you could describe the mundanity of it I suppose every single day and you you'd need some will to keep going even though there's not much you can do about anything the way they coped with it seems to have differed from person to person Glenny seems to have been completely accepting and seems to have been quite capable of just living in the moment in his book he says that he just filled his time with dreaming about what he would do when he got out of the situation he began writing a book of advice for the owners of multihole vessels uh had learned by his mistake his head was full of schemes and he just seemed to be happy to dream his time away Rick did it particularly hard because there was no action he could take to make the situation better Phil had had given up he would eat food he would drink water he called it moisture because there wasn't enough of it he would say give me my moisture they hated his neediness he was always asking for stuff and usually stuff he couldn't have what was their water source they still had some seven up and they had some coke and that kept them going for 40 days that was keeping them alive John Glenny he was almost enjoying himself in fact the thing that really seemed to get up Rick's nose the most was the fact that Glenny actually smiled and laughed occasionally and jokes and just didn't seem to be doing it too hard given that it seemed to be him who got them in this situation in the first place Rick just found that very hard to deal with it's a wonder there weren't fights apparently it came close several times but there were no actual fights after 40 days this is only a third of the way through that's right they had their first rain on June 25th they suddenly heard it raining they rushed top side with a sun cover that they' expected to keep them nice and Shady in the tropics and used it to try to catch water they successfully captured a couple of bottles worth of water and that probably saved their lives so they decided that at all costs they must not lose the sun cover someone didn't take very good care of stowing the sun cover suspicion fell on Phil and was washed away this proved to be a blessing in disguise because with the time on his hands that he had Glenny devised several different systems for catching fresh water he had some electrical conduit on the boat and they slit it down the middle to form semicircular ging they ran some of the around the side of the vessel to catch runoff and they also constructed a kind of fan-shaped array of semicircular channels running into a bucket and lashed that to a spica pole which they stuck upright as a kind of Mast that proved to be quite effective when it began to rain and another week's time as well so they managed to solve the fresh water problem why hadn't anybody found them with your I perb and your gadgets yeah well the eerb conked out after after about 7 days there was just no one listening and there was no one around to hear on land all hope was lost they were expected in Tonga on the 24th of June and that was a conservative time so when they hadn't arrived by then there was a fair bit of anxiety beginning to be voiced and of course a search and rescue effort was mounted on around the 30th of August but it was up by the kerodex where Jim bramwell's vague fixes seem to have placed the rose Noel and Orion criss-crossed that area of water and found nothing and heard nothing so they abandoned the search and there was nothing anyone could do then but wait funnily enough the relatives seemed quite sanguin that these guys would show up again mostly based on the assurances of John glenny's brother Dave who had an identical boat and had assisted in the building of the Ros noell and knew that that boat baring a gas explosion or a collision at Sea just could not sink she would be out there somewhere and it was just a matter of waiting to see where she washed up day 50 Grim isn't it we've described just how miserable it was minute to minute imagine what it must have been like enduring 50 days of it day 50 was a good day because they caught an albatross with a fishing line they cooked it up because at that stage they improvised an LPG burner so they had hot food at the stage they had fresh hot food in the shape of this Albatross John Glenny being a bit of a bon VOR had lots of condiments aboard and so they had this wonderful seabird Curry and then John Glenny showed his complete acceptance of their situation and his profound insensitivity to the fears and the horrors of his Shipmates by speculating what they would have on day 100 everyone else wanted to be rescued the next day but Glenny seemed quite happy to look forward to day 100 and what they would be having for tea then they could catch fish only about a week after they went upside down a groper of all things swam into the cabin and nosed around and then swam out again get out they nicknamed him Harry and he came back they supposed because a single fish same size each time came in swam around and then finned out again they eventually caught him they improvised a net and then one day poor old Harry came in and never never left uh so they had fresh fish there's this peculiar phenomenon where you put an object out in the open ocean and fish seem to congregate around it that seems to have happened with the rose Noel several groper found their way into the boat and nosed around it and they caught the odd one and then they began catching King Fish as well the best place for this was between the main house and the wings the floats of the boat so they're able to net them and GA them day 50 still listeners isn't halfway through their ordeal between day 50 and 100 I more of the same and they must be getting pretty desperate and pretty hungry the food situation is resolving itself now that they're catching fish they're in relatively good shape and they're even able to cook them of course too the next 50 days must have been quite frustrating cuz they saw their first plane on the 27th of August that already seen a ship off in the distance and this had caused a huge rail because Phil had rushed up on Deck waving a little strobe light that they had the ship was Miles Away they could see the ship there was no hope that the ship was going to see this tiny little light in the vastness of the ocean when Glenny pointed this out to fill it apparently provoked a major contrap they saw a plane this indicated to Glenny that they must be in New Zealand Waters they hadn't drifted out into the Pacific on their way to South America at all as you would expect with the prevailing Westerly wind in currents that were taking you there the only planes that there could possibly be here must be originating from New Zealand and probably from Oakland so they figured they were somewhere off the northeastern coast of the North Island the 9th of September they saw another ship and again couldn't attract its attention but this was beginning to give them hope that they were not so far from civilization as they thought it seems to me that even the presence of Kingfish indicated that they weren't as far from the coasts all that as well they began to see jellyfish which is a real greenwater development that means they're definitely back in coastal Waters and by the 19th of September and now we're right up in the high 70s in terms of days a float they began seeing planes more regularly and even Yachts at the stage again it caused big trouble but on Rick's birthday it would have to be Rick John did his infuriating thing of climbing up on the boat and enjoying the sunrise which was his habit he called out does anyone else want to come up and see the sunrise and he got a fairly short shat response to that and he said not even for 's birthday an even shorter sharper response for that and then he said does anyone want to come up and see the sailboat then and of course that got them all on Deck pretty quickly but again the boat just sailed off uh into the distance that happened many times but then 28th September they saw land it got closer and those who knew that part of the coast reasonably well decided they were looking at Great Barrier Island and they were definitely heading inwards they had a southeasterly breeze and it was pushing them in resue was on its way oh my goodness they can't steer the thing if you're that far away from great barer island in the first place you could easily float away from it were they confident they're going to go towards it no there was no confidence they were but you can imagine what a desperate weight that must have been all it would take is a Westerly to blow up and they were gone and they might as well never have cited land for all the God it was going to do them at that point on the 30th of September they can hear the breakers soon enough it becomes plain they're going to go shore on Great Barrier Island this is dangerous yes east coast of Great Barrier Island towering Cliffs lots of outlying rocks it's a rugged coast and it's accounted for its share of shipping in its own right they've got no control over their Destiny whatsoever they're incredibly lucky the waves wash them into a place called little waterfall Bay which is a notch in the cliffs and the bush comes pretty much right down to the water line it's the only place for miles and miles on either side where they weren't going to be smashed to smotherin and killed so on the 30th of September in the dark the rose Noel's dragged over the Rocks Glenny is thrown overboard and nearly drowns but they manage peace meal to get ashore struggle up through the bush it took 6 hours but it was only a very short distance and they broke into a batch and enjoyed their first shower their first proper food you'd be very weak yes they were weak they could barely sit upright big mistake they made though is to really clean themselves up and trim their beards or in Phil's case shave it off all together borrow some clothes from the batch and whatever so they're pretty sharp looking by the next day and they heard a telephone ringing from the neighboring batch they went and broke into that got on the blower made the extraordinary announcement to the outside world that on day 119 after that set sail they were back in Civilization they survived needless to say as soon as word reached the mainland the news media descended on great barer Island and these poor buggers were just grilled mercilessly by the media and meanwhile well of course everyone was thinking well they're not suffering from saltwater boils they're not suffering from scurvy they don't look particularly emaciated and they're clean shaven and some of them were wearing quite nice clothes they were out there for 4 months you could cross to South America in that time and then get back and who knows what kind of cargo you might bring back in that time so on the third day of intensive interviews an Australian radio channel said to Rick so do you still stand by your claim that you were drifting for 119 days on this boat and you can imagine how that must have gone down with these guys stand by your claim that you were a drift in this boat there were a couple of particularly pungent theories on what they'd been up to one was that they were drug Runners and they' headed off to South America and come back with a cargo of something which they probably stashed quite close to where the boat was wrecked that theory was given enough credibility that police and Customs investigated it to the fullest extent they could the other theory is that this was all a great big publicity stunt for Outward Bound because there were two Outward Bound members aboard what clinched their story really was the appearance of John Glenny who probably because he'd done the hardest physical work he was very emaciated and photographs proved that to be the case and also divers went down on the wreck of the Ros Noel and they couldn't help but notice that the bits of the boat that were meant to be above water were heavily encrusted with Barnacles and the bits of the boat that were meant to be below the water were clear so it seemed plain just by looking at the wreckage that this boat had been upside down for a long time what's more the skeptical Customs Department still wanted confirmation of that so they sent samples the H sections or the deck sections to the dsir who studied the marine life on them and in fact they put together a remarkably accurate portrait of the bits of water that the ship had been floating upside down through those two bits of evidence really did it and funnily enough Jim Bramwell whose radio watch had thrown Rescuers and Searchers off his son was out on a yacht not far from where the rose Noel kept sized and one day he just idly scrolled a message put it in the bottle chucked it overboard and that bottle washed up shortly after the rose Noel and within a very short distance when that piece of news became known that the vastly improbable story that these guys were telling that the currents that should have taken them to South America actually delivered them up the coast to Great Barrier suddenly became credible it's just remarkable it is now I'll take it these four didn't go flatting together immediately after did they no but sort of next best thing German and Rick were always close and they got even closer aboard the boat Rick really pulled Jim through he probably wouldn't have made it otherwise upon his return when they were having routine medical checks they were all found to be in very good shape actually except poor old Rick's cancer had returned he began going downhill rapidly and Jim nursed him throughout his final illness having survived all that poor old Rick died on July the 5th 19 1991 there are still survivors today there are Jim lives in America I'm not sure where John Glenny is I believe he still lives in New Zealand I don't think he's a kotti anymore they're still around there's been a TV documentary made of this and there's been a superb play actually called flip side written by Ken Dunham made of this as well it's a remarkable story it's one of those great stories if you include the bushw walk 120 days good Heavens Thank you very much J Crystal this has been the story of the this is London C [Music]

Channel: Epigwaitt History

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Id: 7U1iBk4Nudw

Length: 39min 46sec (2386 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 26 2024