One short scream, and John was under the waves. From their vantage point on the raft, four
survivors watch in horror as tiger sharks rip their friend apart. The sharks are in a feeding frenzy, and begin
to eat John while he's still alive and struggling to surface for air. Five days earlier the skies are clear and
the sea is calm. It's perfect weather for sailing, and Deborah
Scaling Kiley, her friends Brand Cavanagh and Mark Adams, and Captain John Lippoth along
with his girlfriend Meg Mooney are all enjoying cutting through the low waves aboard the Trashman,
an 18 meter luxury yacht decked out with all the luxuries of 1982. The five have been hired by a billionaire
to sail his yacht from Maine to its new owner down in Florida, and the experienced sailors
are making great time. It's a total cake job, the weather is wonderful,
and the yacht is pretty plush. Plus, she's a speed demon, and zips through
the waves like a hot knife through butter. The Trashman is worth every dollar spent on
her, and Deborah can't believe she's actually being paid to basically take a pleasure cruise
down to sunny Florida with some of her closest friends. The group is having a blast and thoroughly
enjoying their adventure, sailing through the first night and into yet another perfect
sunrise. But later in the day, clouds start brewing. At first, the group thinks it'll just be another
late season storm- some wind, some showers. Rough seas, but nothing of any real concern. Plus, the crew is made up of veteran sailors,
trained and experienced in handling stormy seas. The calm waves begin to grow as rain pours
down and winds gust. Normally six to eight feet, the waves are
now peaking at twenty feet. The Trashman handles them no problem, though
the big dips and crests throw the crew around some. Meg Mooney accidentally slashes her leg on
some rigging, the cut is not life threatening, but it is deep and large. She struggles to bandage it as best she can
as the waves only continue to grow in intensity. She has no idea that cutting her leg open
has just doomed her friends to a horrible fate. The boat struggles through what is now becoming
a full-blown tropical storm, and as night falls the waves are reaching a whopping 40
to 50 feet. The Trashman struggles through the gale force
winds and massive waves, but she's taking on water. The bailing pumps are working over time, but
it's an obviously losing battle. The small yacht is being swamped. Then, as another massive wave breaks over
the ship, it's too late- the Trashman has taken on too much water, and is starting to
slip beneath the waves. There's no time to grab supplies- going below
decks is a death sentence. Instead, the crew hurries to free an 11 foot
zodiac raft from the sinking yacht. It's their only chance to survive, and they
desperately tug at the ropes holding it in place even as the ship begins to drag it under. With a final, desperate tug, the raft pops
free- and just in time. All five crew members tread water and watch
as the lights on the sinking Trashman blink off, the yacht sinking to the bottom. But in that brief flicker of light, Deborah
thinks she sees something. It's shaped like a torpedo, a large fish of
some sort? Meg is running on pure adrenaline as she struggles
to get onto the raft. Her leg is bleeding profusely, the stress
of trying to get off the sinking ship having torn free the bandage she had wrapped around
the wound. For several minutes Meg's leg has been bleeding
freely into the Atlantic ocean, and something has noticed it. The crew have to fight the massive waves to
pull themselves up onto the raft. As he kicks against the water to lift himself
up, Mark feels something hit his leg with considerable force. He calls out in surprise, and Deborah leans
over to look at the water below Mark, her face draining white in panic. There, just a few feet below Mark is that
familiar torpedo-shaped body, and beyond it, more like it. Dozens of them. Sharks. tiger sharks to be exact, the most dangerous
shark in the ocean. Known as the garbage cans of the sea, tiger
sharks eat anything they come across. Incredibly aggressive, tiger sharks will even
kill and eat prey just to deny it to another shark, and they are known to swarm the location
of wounded prey, and even attack each other while in the midst of a mindless feeding frenzy-
mortally wounded tiger sharks have been documented still eating prey. And now the sound of the sinking ship and
the smell of Meg's blood in the water has drawn two dozen tiger sharks to the raft's
location. The sharks are anxious, and as the crew fight
the waves, the blood-crazed sharks begin to ram into the raft, trying to knock it over
and force someone overboard. Over and over again the sharks attack the
zodiac, smashing into it at high speed, driven into a frenzy by Meg's bleeding wound. Luckily for the shipwrecked five, the storm
eventually blows itself out, as do the sharks, and as dawn comes the sea is calm once again. But as Deborah and her friends look out across
the waves, they see dozens of fins cutting through the water. The sharks are still here. And to make matters worse, there's no sign
of land or of another ship. They've been blown into the gulf stream off
the coast of North Carolina, into a lane of ocean rarely frequented by normal shipping. They didn't even get a chance to radio off
a mayday before the ship sank, and there's no rescue beacon technology in the early 1980s. In fact, the group of five has absolutely
nothing with them but the clothes on their backs. No food. No water. An ocean full of sharks. And nobody knows the Trashman has sunk. The group tries to keep each other's spirits
up. They know they're off the coast of North Carolina
somewhere, and the east coast of the United States is one of the busiest stretches of
ocean in the world. It's only a matter of time before somebody
spots them, be it a merchant vessel or even a US Navy ship. They feel relieved at first, but Meg isn't
doing very well. She's lost a lot of blood, but even worse,
it's clear her wound is becoming infected. Even now it's turning purplish and bruising. And the sight of fins in the water is an ever-constant
reminder of what lurks just past a few inches of hard rubber raft. Dawn of the second day stranded at sea. Dehydration is starting to take a serious
toll on the crew. There's no cover from the sun above their
heads, and now Deboarh and her friends are wishing for a new storm. At least then there'd be cloud cover to shield
them from the brutal sun's rays, and even better- sweet, sweet rain water to drink. The five are growing weak and hungry, but
the dehydration is getting the worst of them. Meg's wound is definitely infected, and she's
growing very sick. There's nothing that they can do for her though,
there's no food, no water, no medical supplies- nothing but their rubber raft and the vast
open ocean all around them. Also, the sharks. Incredibly, though their numbers have dwindled
somewhat, the tiger sharks have stuck with the raft. That's probably because the water the crew
bail out of the bottom of their raft is full of Meg's blood and now pus. They're basically chumming the waters around
them, but they have no other option- if they don't continuously bail water this raft will
sink just like the Trashman. By dawn of their third day stranded out at
sea, Mark and John can't take it anymore. Dehydration has impaired their judgment, and
even as Deborah and Brad pull at them and scream for them to stop, Mark and John lean
over the edge of the raft and begin gulping down briny sea water. This is a fatal mistake, the salt-laden sea
water may have cured their thirst temporarily, but the ingestion of so much sodium forces
their kidneys to work overtime in a bid to expel the lethal salt. Mark and John are actually urinating out more
water than they're taking in, exponentially accelerating their dehydration. It only takes hours for the hallucinations
to begin. John shouts out in happy surprise when he
spots land on the horizon- but there's only one problem: it's a dehydration-inspired hallucination. Brad and Deborah try to talk John down, telling
him he's hallucinating and there's nothing out there, but he only grows agitated at the
two. Finally, he decides that his only chance is
to swim for the safety of the phantom shore only he can see. Weak and severely dehydrated themselves, there's
nothing Deborah and Brad can do as John jumps into the water. The sharks have been waiting. They're on him in seconds. One tiger strikes him in the leg, sinking
its teeth deep into his flesh. John screams- and then goes quiet as a second
tiger strikes and drags him under the waves. John does not surface again, the tigers are
feeding with such ferocity that they keep his body under. Deborah turns away in horror, she's too shellshocked
and dehydrated to cry. The only sound is the vigorous splashing of
sharks as they snatch up any stray bits of John floating about. They'll eat again real soon. A few hours later, Mark begins acting peculiar. He's clearly unaware of his surroundings. It's as if he doesn't even realize he's on
a raft in the middle of the ocean. In fact, he clearly thinks he's back home,
and he needs to make a run to the store. Just like that, Mark stands up, takes a step,
and falls right off the side of the boat. Bam! The force of the attack slams Mark's body
onto the bottom of the raft. Then, another massive blow from below as yet
another shark tears into Mark. The raft is pummeled by sharks as big as the
raft itself, as the feeding frenzy goes into overdrive just inches underneath Deborah and
Brad. Mark is gone. But the sharks aren't. Despite having eaten two of their friends,
the sharks continue to circle the raft, occasionally nudging it as if testing to see if it might
sink soon. Deborah and Brad continue to bail water through
the rest of the horrible day, Meg far too sick to do anything. She's hardly conscious anymore. The infection has begun to turn her leg black,
as it aggressively spreads through her blood stream. The bottom of the raft is filled with a mixture
of urine, blood, and pus, and Meg is now catatonic and unresponsive. As night falls, Deborah and Brad try and get
what sleep they can, careful to maintain a grip so a wave doesn't pitch them over the
side and into the jaws of the hungry Tigers below them. A few hours later, the two wake up from their
fitful sleep. It's still dark, but under the moonlight it's
become clear- Meg is dead. The infection has spread through her body
and shut down her organs. The only question is what to do with her. The two are starving, and both are intimately
familiar with the stories of sailors committing cannibalism in order to survive. It's a bonafide taboo of the worst kind, but
a stranded sailor lost out at sea is always forgiven for committing what to many is the
most horrific act imaginable- eating human flesh. Brad begins to consider how best to begin
to eat Meg, but Deborah warns him- Meg is too infected to eat. Her body is still boiling with an out of control
infection that's now consuming it from the inside out. Despite their starvation, eating Meg could
prove fatal. But they can't keep the body in the raft with
them, the filthy water they have to continuously bail is filled with her bodily fluids and
the smallest nick could see them infected as well. There's just one thing to do. The two remove Meg's jewelry and her shirt,
hoping to give it to a family member should they survive this ordeal. Then, with grim determination, they move the
naked body onto the side of the raft and prepare to push it over. Despite intense dehydration and near-delirium
though, the two stop- it doesn't feel right to just dump Meg over without saying something. So Deborah improvises, and she recites the
Lord's Prayer and Psalm 23. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence
of mine enemies, thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
all the days of my life; and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever. And with a splash, they push Meg's body overboard. The sharks were waiting. Physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted,
the two simply roll back over the edge of the raft and settle into the murky bottom. They close their eyes and drift off to sleep
as the sharks devour their dead friend. Dawn breaks on the fifth day. Brad and Deborah are close to death and they
know it. Their bodies are covered in staph infections,
their minds on the edge of full-blown delirium even as their organs begin to shut down. And the sharks are still there. Then, suddenly, there's something on the horizon-
a ship! Brad wipes his eyes and looks again, then
blinks and looks a third time. He can't believe it, but it's real, and even
more incredibly the distant ship seems to be sailing straight for them! The two leap up to their feet and begin yelling
as loud as they can and waving their arms around. Miraculously, a deckhand spots them and begins
waving back. A Soviet cargo vessel rescues the two hundreds
of miles from the American coast. The ship's medic immediately begins to treat
their serious infections as the crew brings them water and food to eat. A few days later, the two will be back in
the US where they'll be hospitalized as they recover from their ordeal, but the haunting
memory of sharks eating their friends alive will be with them until the day they die. Now watch I was lost at sea for 76 days with
sharks circling, or click this other video instead!
