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41 Days Stranded at Sea: The Harrowing, Heartbreaking Real-Life Story Behind New Movie 'Adrift'

"It's amazing what you can do when you have to survive," says shipwreck survivor Tami Oldham Ashcraft

Spoiler Alert! This story contains major spoilers about the plot of the new movie Adrift .

The summer of 1983 started out like a fairytale adventure for 23-year-old globetrotter Tami Oldham Ashcraft.

The California native got engaged to her British boyfriend, Richard Sharp, and several months later the two experienced sailors set out on a dream trip from Tahiti to San Diego on a luxurious 44-foot sailboat. Less than two weeks into their trek, the pair — played by Shailene Woodley and Sam Claflin in the new movie Adrift — were trapped in a devastatingly strong hurricane that changed their lives forever.

Ashcraft, who originally detailed her ordeal in a 1998 self-published memoir Red Sky in Mourning , says that although she and Sharp received radio warnings about the developing storm, which started out as a tropical depression and quickly gained in intensity and speed, they were unable to outrun it.

“We ran from it for three days trying to figure it out, because it kept changing direction,” Ashcraft recalls to PEOPLE. “The storms are going twice your speed. We couldn’t make that kind of time with the boat to get out of the way.”

When the hurricane fully descended upon them on Oct. 12, Sharp had sent Ashcraft below deck to rest. The last thing she remembers before the boat capsized and she was knocked unconscious is her fiancé screaming.

“When I woke up from being knocked out for 27 hours, I didn’t know where I was,” she recalls. “I was like, ‘Where am I?’ The boat’s half-full of water at that point, I couldn’t even really remember anything. Then I started moving and unlatching myself [from her safety suit and various debris], looking around going, ‘Oh my God. Richard. Where’s Richard?'”

All she could find of Sharp in the midst of the wreckage was his broken safety tether hanging lifelessly over the boat. While the reality of her grave situation swept over her, so did the awareness that she was badly injured — her head was split open behind her hairline and she had a serious gash on her leg — and drifting aimlessly somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

“They were both bad. My head injury I could keep clean somewhat, keep bandages on it,” says Ashcraft. “Thank goodness it’s underneath my hairline so you can’t see it. It splayed my head wide open, and I just bled. My leg I kept hitting on everything, and then there was so much water in the boat. It would just stay wet all the time. I was super worried about my leg. Then I started ripping up t-shirts and stuff when I ran out of bandages.”

After she self-administered first aid, Ashcraft’s next key survival move was crafting a makeshift sail from some of the debris on the boat and setting course for Hawaii — 1,500 miles away — which she was able to do via her navigation skills.

“What saved my life was knowing celestial navigation, that I could navigate by the sun and get myself somewhere,” Ashcraft says. “You have to do three sights a day, and sometimes I would have to do four. Doing all the mathematics required for that really helped me to focus.”

RELATED VIDEO: Two American Women and Their Dogs Rescued After Five ‘Hopeless’ Months Lost At Sea

It also helped keep her mind off her grief over losing her fiancé in such a tragic way.

“I had to tell myself onboard that I couldn’t cry anymore, because I was losing way too much water,” Ashcraft says. “My water supply was very limited. I just had a big talk with myself. That inner strength to survive is so strong. You just don’t realize it, until you’re put in a really crucial time that you have to survive. It’s amazing what you can do. That just comes from within really. Then keeping your mind active.”

Ashcraft survived 41 days adrift in the Pacific, subsisting on peanut butter and willpower, before she approached Hilo, Hawaii and was picked up by a Japanese research vessel after sending up a flare around 4 o’clock in the morning.

The ship’s crew members “were shocked,” she recalls. “I was exhausted. I was way underweight — I’m 5’8″-5’9″ and I weighed about 100 lbs. I didn’t even go to the hospital. Can you believe that? I can’t believe nobody sent me to the hospital.”

When Ashcraft returned home to San Diego, the weight of her near-death experience and the loss of her first love fully set in, and she face a long recovery from her injuries, physically and mentally.

“I had the head injury and I couldn’t even read a book for nearly five years. I couldn’t finish sentences, my short term memory was really bad,” she says. “Seeing couples together, that sort of thing, was hard. I had nightmares. I was consumed for years and years with thinking about it. I then realized after five or six years that I could choose when to start thinking about him and the experience. I started realizing, ‘Oh, I’m not consumed by this all day now.'”

Although Ashcraft says her physical injuries healed well enough that she never went to a hospital for medical attention, she regrets not seeking out help from a therapist or counselor.

“I wish I had gotten some professional mental help. I think I could have sped up my recovery a little bit more,” she says. “Not so much the grieving but the mental recovery of reading and that kind of thing. They can give you projects to work on and things, and also just make sure that you’re going around the right track.”

Ashcraft says it took her a full five years before she was able to come out of her mental fog and feel joy again. She returned to the water almost immediately — only these days she prefers power boating to sailing when she navigates near Washington’s San Juan Islands, where she lives with her family, husband Ed, a contractor, and her two daughters.

“We’ve been a boating family,” she says. “I think it teaches the children so much more about life.”

Ashcraft still speaks publicly about her incredible survival story to groups like the Navy Survival School. “I’m glad to help, although I’m sorry I was in that situation. Now I choose when I want to think about it. For many years I was consumed by it and a lot of that had to do with just moving on in life,” she says. “It’s still in your heart. It’s just in a different way.”

Adrift is now playing in theaters.

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Trailer for Yacht Thriller 'Stowaway' with Ruby Rose & Frank Grillo

by Alex Billington July 21, 2022 Source: YouTube

"Push the red button." Yep that's all it takes to defeat them! Voltage Pictures has revealed an official trailer for a survival thriller titled Stowaway , formerly known as The Yacht . Both of these titles are bland and boring, neither really works. There was already this sci-fi survival thriller called Stowaway on Netflix a few years ago anyway. A tenacious party girl fights to survive after three thieves commandeer her luxury yacht. Described as similar to Die Hard or Panic Room but on a yacht. The indie film stars Ruby Rose , Frank Grillo , Emma Maddock , Patrick Schwarzenegger , Luis Da Silva Jr. , & Major Dodge . Aside from the trailer showing most of the film, including what the thieves are after, this is just a bad trailer. Why does every shot in this look so dark?! Everything on the boat is so poorly shot it's hard to see anything happening.

Here's the official trailer for Declan Whitebloom's Stowaway , direct from Voltage's YouTube :

The film is about a tenacious and troubled young woman who inherits a luxury yacht from her estranged father and has to fight to survive when it gets hijacked by thieves. Unable to escape and trapped on the yacht at high seas, the prey becomes the hunter as she turns the tables on the intruders and takes matters into her own hands. Stowaway , formerly known as just The Yacht , is directed by British filmmaker Declan Whitebloom , making his feature directorial debut after numerous music videos and short films previously. The screenplay is by Ian Hayden. Produced by Adam Beasley, Ford Corbett, Mike Dill, Michael Jefferson, Nathan Klingher, Jib Polhemus, Lowell Shapiro, Anthony Standberry, and Ryan Winterstern. Voltage Pics will debut Whitebloom's Stowaway streaming on AMC+ starting August 5th, 2022 this summer. Anyone?

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Woody Harrelson Helms a Yacht for the Ultra-Rich in Triangle of Sadness

NEON has released the trailer for Triangle of Sadness, a comedic, nauseating satire of the ultra-rich and famous.

'The ship is going under.' Watch Woody Harrelson helm a $250 million luxury yacht for the uber-rich in the new trailer for Triangle of Sadness from Neon. Harris Dickinson stars in the film, which sees him as a male model at the prime of his career. He makes his way to the massive super yacht, and things are going excellent until the gross-out, over-the-top shenanigans that will ensue in the movie.

Despite receiving the Palme d'Or, Triangle of Sadness sparked walkouts at the Cannes Film Festival, according to The Age . One 15-minute scene involves graphic vomiting and defecation following some gooey oysters, champagne, and a fair amount of sea sickness. You catch a small glimpse of it in the trailer, but the full-fledged version is sure to be too much for some audiences.

Related: Best Woody Harrelson Movies, Ranked

Triangle of Sadness will be the third film in a row to be a Palme d'Or winner for Neon, following Titane and Parasite . The movie makes its North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival next month before sailing into theaters on Oct 7. Watch the brand-new, excessively nauseating trailer below.

Director Ruben Östlund is Looking to Widen His Audience

Ruben Östlund is the filmmaker behind Triangle of Sadness , and he's had success in the industry before. However, until now, Östlund was prominent in European arthouse cinema, with foreign language films to his credit thus far. The director is making a big jump to a film primarily in English. The director wants to broaden his audience and bring his movies to a global scale while maintaining his initial fan base. He tells IndieWire , 'it's been very important to try to keep that audience and step it up, make it a little bit bigger, of course.'

Related: Triangle of Sadness Wins 2022 Palme d'Or; Other Winners from 75th Cannes Film Festival

"My intention was to shock the audience as much as I always want to shock the audience. But I was scared to lose my old audience. I was scared to lose the kind of connection I had built up with the distributors of the European arthouse cinema. It's been very important for me to try to keep that audience and step it up, make it a little bit bigger, of course."

Östlund is no stranger to the Palme d'Or either, as he's won in the past for his film The Square starring Elisabeth Moss . The movie received an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film of the Year, proving that the director can consistently make great projects. Audiences are hoping for something just as hysterical when Triangle of Sadness lands in theaters later this year, on Oct 7.

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24 Movies Trapped At Sea

Water, water everywhere, and not a damn way to get home. That’s this week’s gallery theme: Movies where we see people trapped on the open seas, inspired by  Adrift , starring Shailene Woodley and Sam Claflin as two young lovers whose boat is incapacitated after sailing directly into a catastrophic hurricane (and with Claflin’s character suffering from a life-threatening injury). Likewise, the movies in this gallery see heroes under immense pier pressure when their boats get hijacked, destroyed, or worse of all, disappeared all together.

Note: Because a lot of movies fall under this theme, we’re not including submarine movies ( Das Boot ,  Below ,  Black Sea ) or movies where the heroes can generally head home at any time ( Jaws ,  The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou ).

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Stowaway (2021)

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‘the boat’: film review.

First-time feature filmmaker Winston Azzopardi directs his son Joe Azzopardi in offbeat suspenser 'The Boat,' set off the coast of Malta.

By Justin Lowe

Justin Lowe

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A unique two-hander that pits a lost seaman against a disturbingly menacing yacht, The Boat certainly doesn’t shy away from challenging plotting, but whether it can persuade horror fans that it’s worth a look in an increasingly crowded marketplace will require some very persuasive marketing, at the very least.

Not far from the Maltese port of Valetta, a local fisherman (Joe Azzopardi) sets out in his small outboard-motor-powered boat for a day on the water. Soon, however, a heavy fog drifts in, obscuring the shoreline and leaving him completely disoriented. A sudden collision with a drifting sailboat convinces him that he’s found safety, but boarding and searching the yacht, he finds it deserted. When he returns topside, his boat has disappeared, trapping him aboard the luxury vessel. The 40-foot Aeolus proves well-equipped and -provisioned, so he tries to raise Valetta’s port on the marine radio, but can’t make contact.

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A routine trip to the latrine turns into a claustrophobic nightmare when the door jams, trapping him inside for hours listening to the sound of the boat taking on water as a freighter passes by without hailing him. When he finally breaks the door down and finds himself in waist-deep seawater, he takes drastic measures to get the bilge pumps running. Exhausted, he retreats below deck and crashes out in one of the private berths, only to find the door locked when he wakes up. Convinced that someone, or something, is somehow in control of the boat, the fisherman desperately tries to escape the Aeolus , as the yacht powers through the waves, mysteriously locked on autopilot and headed directly into a gathering storm.

The central Mediterranean region surrounding Malta is rich in both folklore and classic mythology, where the demigod Aeolus was considered the “keeper of the winds” in Homer’s Odyssey . Whether such a similarly influential entity controls the sailboat and the fate of the fisherman remains unclear, or perhaps he’s been imprisoned by some sadistic manipulator controlling the vessel remotely. The final frames partially reveal the filmmakers’ perspective, but by then their rather forced narrative allusions have been squandered over the course of the film.

Director Winston Azzopardi clearly knows his way around a luxury yacht, skillfully shooting in tight quarters whether above or below decks, and even inserting some modest special effects. Pacing is not his strong suit, however, and the script, co-written with Joe Azzopardi, becomes repetitive and predictable as the plotting quickly comes up against the physical limitations of the sailboat’s layout.

With very few spoken lines, Joe Azzopardi’s physical demeanor effectively conveys the fisherman’s confusion and desperation, but the lack of any clear narrative resolution lends scant significance to the role.

Production companies: Latina Pictures, Hurricane Films Cast: Joe Azzopardi  Director: Winston Azzopardi Screenwriters: Joe Azzopardi, Winston Azzopardi Producers: Joe Azzopardi, Winston Azzopardi, Roy Boulter Executive producers: Rita Galea, Yolanda Golea, Sol Papadopoulos Director of photography: Marek Traskowski Production designer: Ino Bonello  Editor: Daniel Lapira Music: Lachlan Anderson Venue: Beyond Fest Sales: Carnaby International

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'Triangle of Sadness' Trailer Reveals Shipwrecked Cruise for the Uber-Rich

Woody Harrelson plays the doomed cruise's alcoholic captain in the upcoming satire.

NEON released the theatrical trailer for its third consecutive Palme d'Or winner, the satirical comedy Triangle of Sadness . In the upcoming film, a cruise for the uber-rich sinks, leaving its survivors to fend for themselves on an island in this highly-anticipated criticism of the elite one percent that will be released in theaters on October 7.

Five years after satirist Ruben Östlund won the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 2017 with The Square , he returned with his second award-winning satire Triangle of Sadness . Since premiering at the Cannes Film Festival , the Swedish writer-director’s first English-language film turns the social hierarchy upside down, revealing the tawdry relationship between power and beauty. Triangle of Sadness centers in on a model celebrity couple, Carl ( Harris Dickinson , Beach Rats and County Lines ) and Yaya ( Charlbi Dean , Don’t Sleep and Blood in the Water) , who are invited on the luxury cruise for the uber-rich as well as their alcoholic boat captain ( Woody Harrelson , True Detective and Natural Born Killers ).

The Triangle of Sadness trailer not only succeeds in setting the tone for what to expect from the upcoming film, but it calls privilege in to question with the use of tense moments, awkward requests, and melodramatic background music. This gives viewers a glimpse at the absurdity, satire, and gross factor that divided audiences at Cannes.

RELATED: From ‘Amour’ to ‘Triangle of Sadness’: Every Palme d'Or Winner of the Past Decade (And How to Watch Them)

Joining Harrelson, Dickinson and Dean is Croatian actor Zlatko Burić , known for appearing in Nicolas Winding Refn’s Pusher trilogy. The Triangle of Sadness cast also includes Iris Berben ( Eddie the Eagle ), Sunnyi Melles ( The Awakening of Motti Wolkenbruch ), Henrik Dorsin ( Solsidan ), Dolly De Leon ( Verdict ), Vicki Berlin ( Forbrydelsen ), Oliver Ford Davies ( Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace ), and Arvin Kananian ( Aniara ).

Fredrik Wenzel , who worked with Östlund on Force Majeure and The Square , is in charge of cinematography for the film with art direction from Gabriel de Knopp and Daphne Koutra . Executive producers are Brina Elizabeta Blaz , Alessandro Del Vigna , Lizzie Francke , Dan Friedkin , Ryan Friedkin , Micah Green , Andreas Roald , James Benjamin Shannon , Jim Stark , Daniel Steinman , Bradley Thomas , Dan Wechsler and Jamal Zeinal Zade . Philippe Bober and Erik Hemmendorff are producing.

Triangle of Sadness will be hitting North American theaters on October 7. Watch the first theatrical trailer below.

Here’s the official synopsis for the film:

“Set in the world of world fashion – a satire in which a pair of models find themselves at a crossroads in their careers. Fashion model couple Carl and Yaya are invited on a luxury cruise. When the yacht sinks they become stranded on a desert island with a group of billionaires and a cleaning lady. In the fight for survival, old hierarchies are turned upside down since the cleaning lady is the only one who knows how to fish.”

‘Triangle of Sadness’ Trailer Will Make You Wanna Eat the Rich (and Puke Them Out)

• By Tomás Mier

Skip the nachos at the theater if you go see Triangle of Sadness this fall. On Tuesday, Neon released the trailer for the Ruben Östlund-directed film, which had some Cannes viewers walking out of the theater after they watched the snobbiest of snobs doing the most human things: puking and pooping.

The trailer — which opens with twink models giving their best rich and poor brand impressions — gives just a taste (maybe we shouldn’t use that word) of the shenanigans to come on a luxury cruise, where the film is set. The film is a satirical take down on modern capitalism and the one percent.

“The success of a luxury cruise depends on you,” says a supervisor on the cruise as clips of Instagram-ready moments on the boat are shown. “I don’t want to hear anybody say ‘No.’ It’s always ‘Yes sir!’ and ‘Yes ma’am!’ “

Meanwhile, one worker nervously stutters before getting into a hot tub after a rich lady commands her to “enjoy the moment.”  The trailer takes a turn after a different wealthy woman asks the boat’s drunk captain ( Woody Harrelson ) to “clean the sails.” The boat begins to move way too much, causing cruisers to vomit, some to poop, and others to fall down stairs.

The trailer gives a look at the cruisers and the workers stranded on an island as one woman says, “This is really bad. Really, really bad.”

The film took home the Palme d’Or at Cannes earlier this year, making it the Force Majeur director  Östlund’s second movie to earn the title after The Square in 2017. It’s also the third-consecutive film produced by Neon to take home the award.

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How 'Triangle of Sadness' Built (and Destroyed) a Luxury Yacht for the Ultra-Rich

Filmmaker ruben östlund explains what went into designing and filming on a luxury yacht for this year's buzzy cruise ship satire 'triangle of sadness.'.

This story contains mild spoilers for Triangle of Sadness.

Most of  Triangle of Sadness  takes place on a European cruise that's so expensive, only the mega-wealthy can afford a cabin. The Cannes Palme d'Or-winning hit (out now in theaters) follows model/influencer couple Carl and Yaya (Harris Dickinson and Charlbi Dean) as they're invited for free to wine and dine alongside vacationing billionaires. While the models themselves are of an elite class, able to vacation in exchange for pictures on Instagram, even they find that they're outsiders on the ship, discovering that most other guests gained their supreme wealth by exploiting the system. 

Aboard a pristine ship sailing on waters that couldn't be more blue and where there's little else to do but relax, a cruise was simply the perfect setting, according to Swedish filmmaker Ruben Östlund, when he thought of writing and directing a movie about the rich and beautiful. Especially considering how prevalent images of celebrities and influencers lounging on yachts have become on our feeds, the concept was always what he had in mind. 

The director wanted the film to be a riotous takedown of the ways in which the wealthy wield power—similar to his past social satires, like how 2014's  Force Majeure  dealt with self-interest on a family vacation gone wrong and 2017's  The Square  takedown of the art world. So not only was a cruise the perfect symbol for affluence and class—with its upper and lower decks, and crew catering to every whim of those sunbathing by the pool—it was the perfect recipe for disaster. While Triangle of Sadness  ridicules the lack of self-awareness of the voyagers aboard the ship, including Russian oligarchs and British arms dealers, it's also an instant eat-the-rich classic, as one night of choppy waters subjects them to total seasickness-induced debasement and, later, an ouroboros of a shipwreck. 

The inspiration for Triangle of Sadness first came from Östlund's wife, Sina Östlund, and her work as a fashion photographer. His curiosity about hierarchies in the fashion industry and hearing about her shoots on yachts made him realize that he "wanted to make a film about beauty as a currency, and that beauty can become a currency that can make you climb in class society, and I got interested in putting these people on a deserted island," he says. What better way to put them there, forcing them to fend for themselves without knowing any sort of survival skills, than making their exclusive ship go down?

In researching the project, Östlund spent 10 days on a Sea Cloud sailing cruise in the Mediterranean, departing from Italy and traveling to Sardinia, Corsica, and Spain. When it came time for production, the intention was always to shoot as much as possible on a yacht. But Östlund didn't look into filming on just any yacht. He sought out one of the most famous in history: Christina O , the nearly 100-meter vessel once owned by Aristotle and Jackie Kennedy Onassis.

"I couldn't help myself," Östlund says, of paying the boat's hefty rental fee for nine days. "Onassis was the richest person in the world during the '70s, and on Christina O was basically where the Western elite gathered. Churchill, Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, and Maria Callas—basically everyone that were superstars at that time spent time on that yacht. So when we started to do research and look for the yacht [to use], I couldn't help myself of thinking this is symbol value, and how fun it would be to blow it up in the air."

Even before the yacht blows up after a pirate attack,  Triangle of Sadness is like watching capitalism capsize in real time. It's constantly working the class dynamics between the crew and the wealthy guests, but it's one scene in particular—actually inspired by an Italian buffet that was served on the cruise Östlund went on in preparation during rough weather and got passengers seasick—when the veneer of luxury is stripped away, turning the austere guests into projectile vomiting, diarrhea-having sacks of flesh. 

During the night of the captain's dinner, the Marxist captain (Woody Harrelson) refuses to man the ship as it sails through stormy seas, making guests  very sick. To capture the wooziness as the camera itself lolls side-to-side, the director and his collaborator/set designer Josefin Åsberg opted to build a set. "I asked her, 'Do you think it's possible to build a full dining room of a luxury yacht in a studio on a gimbal that we can rock so much that the furniture starts sliding?'" Östlund recalls. "And she is a person that is completely crazy, so she said, 'Yes, let's do this!'"

The space's plush, regal carpet, nautical accents, grand piano, and white table cloths of the dining room seamless fit with the Christina O 's grand interior. "Sometimes when you start a project like this, you think, No, I was really crazy when I got the idea ," he says, "But if you start to look at the details that are built in that set, it was so beautifully done." That is, until everything gets drenched in vomit and the excrement from exploding toilets, as the captain would rather get into a drunken socialism-vs-capitalism quoting match with a Russian "shit seller" (Zlatko Buric) than commandeer the vessel to safety.  

Before the passengers' multi-course dinner gets puked up, the meal featuring oysters, octopus, gelée, and more feels as integral to the cruise's atmosphere as the actual dining room. "We had a good Michelin chef preparing the food for us," Östlund says. "So we said, 'Okay, we want you to make the dishes in a way that would be, What would be the most horrible dish if it came on a plate in front of you and you're sitting and dealing with seasickness? ' And he was like, 'Okay, now I know what the target is. No problem!'"

Östlund ensured the dishes were plated to look more questionable than edible, in contrast with the captain's proletariat-approved burger and fries, because he doesn't like fine dining. "I always feel, as soon as you go in these Michelin restaurants, the absurdity of every dish comes in," he says. Coincidentally, Östlund was able to consult his casting director who happens to be well-versed in gourmet restaurants, as her husband runs a Michelin-starred establishment in Stockholm. "She told me it's very often that they have to clean up the toilets because people are throwing up," he says, "people are vomiting because there's so much food."

Beside the detail to the ship's food, its sailing path (and where the guests eventually get shipwrecked) was carefully considered. Not only did a luxury yacht in the Mediterranean feel more posh than an American cruise departing from Florida into the Caribbean, Östlund explains he wanted to look past our typical ideas of tropical deserted islands for where the few that made it off the boat ended up stranded. With a tip from one of the film's Greek producers, they looked into Chiliadou, a beach on the Greek island of Evia.

"The beach is so beautiful and we loved the environment, this dramatic setting, but we had a problem," Östlund says. "There are nudist anarchists that hang out on this beach… How do you convince anarchists to let them move away from the beach and let us shoot there?" With some convincing ("We're comrades! An ally!"), the crew got access to the picturesque, rocky location that looks like the wealthy would otherwise helicopter to and vacation on, were they not castaways.

Aside from bringing his daughters onto the Christina O and watching them order rounds of iced teas, one of Östlund's favorite memories filming on the yacht was seeing Sunnyi Melles and Alicia Eriksson play out the moment in which Melles' wife of a Russian oligarch demands a crew member to enjoy the jacuzzi fully clothed, and, eventually, for the entire staff to go down the waterslide. (The waterslide does in fact belong to the Christina O . "It seems like that's what the rich people want to do when they go on a cruise: They want to go on a waterslide!" Östlund says.)

"When I did research, something that was interesting was it turned out it's not so unusual that [guests] actually ask the crew to go for a swim," he says. "I thought it was a very interesting aspect of abuse of power—instead of pushing someone down, thinking, I'm offering something nice for you . When you look at power structures, we often describe the enjoyable part of power is to control other people, but I think a very enjoyable part of power is the one that is being generous."

That twisted generosity is certainly a punchline of  Triangle of Sadness , which itself is never generous to its mostly ultra-privileged characters. In the film, their affluence was always bound to sink.

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The trip aboard a luxury yacht of three couples that will turn from an exciting experience to a terrible nightmare. The trip aboard a luxury yacht of three couples that will turn from an exciting experience to a terrible nightmare. The trip aboard a luxury yacht of three couples that will turn from an exciting experience to a terrible nightmare.

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Terrifying true story behind Josh Duhamel’s new Shark Week movie

A-lister Josh Duhamel’s latest movie is a terrifying stranded-at-sea-surrounded-by-sharks story, but what makes it scarier is it actually happened.

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A luxury yacht and a six-day voyage on the high seas turns into a bloody nightmare for this group in a true story that plays out in Josh Duhamel’s latest Hollywood movie.

Capsized: Blood in the Water is now available to stream on Foxtel Now and is the first scripted feature film made just for Shark Week. It’s about five people who are stranded at sea surrounded by dozens of sharks for days. Only two live to tell the tale.

What makes the movie even more terrifying is that it’s based on a true story.

In 1982, a group set out from Maine in perfect sailing conditions en route to Florida. But two days into the journey, their 18-metre yacht Trashman capsized during a violent storm, throwing 24-year-old sailor Deborah Scaling-Kiley and her friends into the ocean.

One of her crewmates, Meg Mooney, slashed her leg in the struggle – making them a magnet for great white sharks who began circling the group.

They managed to clamber onto a life raft, but within hours “hundreds” of killer sharks began circling and even ramming the boat in an attempt to dislodge the terrified crew members.

CALM BEFORE THE STORM

The crew, which included Deborah, Meg, Captain John Lippoth (Duhamel), yachtsman Brad and Englishman Mark Adams, were to sail up the East Coast of America and drop the yacht off to its new owner in Florida.

Deborah was looking forward to the six-day, 2100km trip.

“The weather was beautiful, the boat was fun to steer,” she said to The Sun . “It doesn’t get much better than that.”

But on the second day, the weather took a turn for the worse, and as night fell, the yacht hit a terrifying tropical storm.

As nine-metre waves crashed against the mast and 110km/h winds battered the sails, the captain, who had been drinking heavily, fell asleep at the helm.

Deborah was woken in the middle of the night by panicked voices and found icy water pouring into the cabin.

The boat was capsizing and Meg fell against some rigging, badly cutting her leg.

The panicked crew jumped into the water, and Mark inflated a 3.4 metre dinghy.

The crew clambered in, but before he could join them, Mark felt something nudge his leg.

At that moment, to Deborah’s horror, she saw hundreds of sharks in the water around them, swimming dangerously close to their boat.

“The minute we got in there were fins surrounding the dinghy,” she said. “They were everywhere.”

The killer creatures had been drawn to the blood from Meg’s open wound and had come from miles.

One of the sharks grabbed the rope on the front of the boat and started pulling it along in the water – taking the crew on a terrifying joy ride.

When that failed the sharks began to ram the tiny boat in a bid to topple them out.

Dive into Shark Week on Discovery Channel. Stream Foxtel Now

ONLY THE BEGINNING

Hours turned into days and the starving crew became severely dehydrated.

With urine and the blood and pus from Meg’s wounds sloshing about on the floor of the dinghy, the crew started developing infections all over their bodies.

Taking a turn for the worse, Meg’s wounded leg became infected and blood poisoning began spreading through her body.

By day three, with infection and dehydration rife, the crew began to get delirious as their brains were starved of water.

Desperate, John and Mark started to drink salt water – which accelerates dehydration and causes kidneys to shut down.

Before long John was hallucinating. He suddenly thought he saw land and jumped off the side of the boat.

“All of a sudden we just hear this shrill scream. Blood-curdling. Then it was over, silence. There was no crying, nothing. There was no doubt what got him. The sharks got him,” Deborah recalled.

With Mark also delusional and Meg weak from her blood poisoning, Brad and Deborah were the only ones left with their wits about them and made a pledge to look out for each other.

Shortly after John’s death, Mark – who had been hallucinating for hours – mumbled that he was going to the convenience store to buy beer and cigarettes.

Despite Deborah and Brad’s attempts to bring him back to reality, he too plunged into the shark-infested waters.

The sharks instantly moved in, banging against the bottom of the boat and spinning it round as they tore into Mark’s flailing body in a frenzied attack.

“It was by far the most horrifying moment of my entire life,” Deborah said.

DYING A SLOW DEATH

That night, as the infection in her blood took hold, Meg began having severe hallucinations.

“We were sitting there watching Meg die and it was tragic,” Deborah said.

When the remaining pair woke in the morning, she was dead – lying in the “fetid mess of seaweed, blood, urine and pus” on the floor.

Brad admits he considered eating her body in a desperate bid for survival, but Deborah warned him Meg was too infected and insisted they had to throw her off the boat.

They took off her shirt and jewellery to give to her family on their return.

“It was such a sad moment because we laid her naked body on the side of the raft and then we decided we couldn’t just roll her off. She needed some sort of funeral,” Deborah said.

“So we said the Lord’s Prayer and Psalm 23 and we gently pushed her body overboard.

“Then we decided to go back to sleep so when the sharks attacked we wouldn’t have to see it.”

In another terrifying moment, Brad fell into the water while trying to clean the boat out, and Deborah broke down as he struggled to find the strength to get him back in.

“I felt like I’d just doomed Brad to death,” she said. “If the sharks came back, he was dead.”

THEIR MIRACLE RESCUE

With a surge of adrenaline Brad managed to pull himself in, and moments later desperation turned to joy as he spotted a Russian cargo ship on the horizon.

The pair waved frantically at the crew – who waved back – and soon they had thrown a life ring into the water centimetres from the boat.

The pair jumped into the water and were winched on-board the ship.

“I didn’t care who these people were or where we were going,” Deborah said. “I was there and Brad was there and we were alive.”

Deborah went on to become a motivational speaker and wrote a book – Albatross: The True Story of a Woman’s Survival at Sea – in 1994.

She sadly died in 2012 at her home in Mexico, at the age of 54, from unknown causes.

Brad continues to work as a mariner in Massachusetts but says the 1982 ordeal has left him a changed man.

“It’s not something that you turn off once you’ve been through it,” he said. “You keep living in survival mode. I don’t know if you’re shell-shocked, but it’s impossible to just turn it off and live the way you did before.”

Capsized: Blood in the Water is now streaming on Foxtel Now

This article originally appeared on The Sun and was reproduced with permission

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120-foot luxury yacht runs aground off West Maui

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) - A luxury tour yacht is stuck on the rocks off Lahaina, the state DLNR Division of Boating and Ocean Recreation said.

The 120-foot Maui Princess ran aground in shallow waters off Lahaina around 8:30 a.m. Thursday.

But the U.S. Coast Guard says they are not responding because the crew was not in distress.

DOBOR said the owner is trying to hire a tug to attempt to remove it at high tide.

There was no immediate word on possible injuries, coral damage, or fuel leaks.

This story will be updated.

Copyright 2024 Hawaii News Now. All rights reserved.

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