119 Days Upside Down; Trapped Inside the Capsized Rose-Noëlle | E258

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

16:37 Rescue System Failure

18:19 Water Food Survival

21:33 Tension And Psychology