On the third day, Lippoth-in a state of delirium-jumped into the water and attempted to swim to shore. They started hallucinating and rambling incoherently. Two days after the Trashman sunk, Lippoth and Adams, already dehydrated from alcohol and dying of thirst, began drinking seawater. The crew found themselves adrift with no supplies or water, miles from land. Her bleeding attracted sharks, who followed the lifeboat for the remainder of the journey. The crew managed to make it to a lifeboat, but not before the ship's rigging seriously injured Mooney, leaving severe lacerations on her arms and legs. Two days after they set sail, the yacht, torn apart by the sea, began to sink. Kiley recalls wind speeds of over 70 knots, and 40-foot waves so powerful they ripped holes in the boat. A massive storm appeared out of nowhere, and Trashman headed right into the heart of it. Of the five people on that yacht, only Kiley and Cavanagh were experienced, capable sailors.Īfter the boat passed North Carolina, the trip took a turn for the worst. Lippoth and Adams also spent the entire voyage completely drunk. Lippoth kept making excuses to go below deck, for instance, and Kiley soon realized that their captain was afraid of the ocean. The first half of the trip was pretty smooth sailing, although Kiley started noticing things that made her uneasy. The plan was to take the yacht from Annapolis, Maryland down to Florida to meet up with its owner. The two other crew members on the trip were Mark Adams and Brad Cavanagh. John Lippoth, the captain of the ship, brought his girlfriend Meg Mooney along for the ride. So, she thought that signing up to crew the 58-foot sailing yacht Trashman in October of 1982 was just another job. She had spent most of her life working as a crew member on yachts around the world. They had been lost at sea for 50 days in total.ĭeborah Kiley was no stranger to the seas. The sailor rescued the three boys and took them to a hospital in Fiji, and then back to their homes on Tokelau. With only days or even hours left to live, a fishing boat halfway between Samoa and Fiji spotted them. Their situation was so dire that they began drinking seawater, a sure sign that death is near. Having spent more than a month adrift at sea, the three boys had no food and no water, and were suffering from extreme exposure. Around 500 people attended a memorial service for the boys, representing about a third of the total population of the island chain. Meanwhile, after a month with no news, their community believed that the boys were dead. After a few weeks-with no food and no sign of rescue-they grew desperate enough to catch a bird and eat it. They had brought enough water with them for two days, but that quickly ran out and they had to rely on rainwater. Not knowing which way was home, the group became lost, drifting further and further from land. Shortly after sailing into the ocean, the three teens lost sight of the shore and became disoriented. However, when Filo Filo, Etueni Nasau, and Samu Pelesa set sail on October 5, 2010, it would be a longer trip than any of them were expecting. The islands are close enough together that sailing from one to the other is a relatively simple, cheap, and straightforward mode of travel.įor three teenage boys on the small island of Tokelau, sailing was routine. In many Pacific island chains, people use small boats to sail from one island to the next.
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