There are moments at sea where experience, preparation, and even luck mean nothing, where a single sound in the dark can turn a lifetime of knowledge into pure instinct.

Today's story is one of those moments.

A family, four children, a dream years in the making, and a reef that should not have been there.

This is the story of John Silverwood, the Emerald, Jane, and the night everything changed.

I'm Megan, I'm Danielle, and this is off the trails.

Okay, well, I don't think we have anything to go over.

I don't think so, other than this is not a business item.

But I meant to text you the other day when I was going to the hockey game.

It was literally like twenty four degrees and a woman was running in bike shorts and just like a sports bra.

It was also, oh, I forgot to say, it was also snowing.

That's a choice, it is.

I wanted to roll down my window and just like provide her validation, be like, your abs and glutes look great.

Please go home and put on a hoodie, please please.

I mean, I've definitely ran with.

Probably less layers than I should have when it's been cold, but that I don't know if I've ever gone that far.

I would say that that's no layers.

Yeah, there's no there's no layers there.

She was really only wearing what was legally required to not be charged with, like public indecency.

It was snowing actively snow.

You're like, listen, I get that your heart rate is up, but mine is not.

So I'm cold just looking at you.

That's that's really funny.

So yeah, I don't think we have any business, so I think we can get into today's story.

Let's do it.

I can't believe there's only two weeks left of the year.

I know mentally I'm already late into mid January, though.

I need to do a lot of reflecting and planning the next couple weeks.

Just go into the new year.

Just feeling some calendar soul searching.

Yeah, like, you know, just look back at your year, look at you know, kind of your goals and your.

Habits and all of that, and maybe some things you want to leave behind.

So you know, hopefully I'll try.

To be able to do that in the next couple of weeks.

I ordered my new twenty twenty six planner last night, so ooh.

That's a new planner.

Is just so satisfying.

It's refreshing.

All right.

Well, without further ado, let's get into today's story.

I realized that I don't think we've done a survival story recently.

We have not for a while.

But since we have not done one in a while, my Patreon this week is also a survival.

Perfect So if you guys have been missing our survival stories, this one's for you.

And if you're not on Patreon, you can head over there because Danielle's next episode will be for you as well.

Get your fill in, all right.

So John Silverwood was no stranger to the ocean.

By the time he was an adult, Sailing wasn't just a hobby.

It was a defining part of who he was.

John was a successful property developer living in Rancho Santa Fe, California, but his relationship with the sea started much earlier.

When he was just fourteen years old, he was invited to go sailing with a friend and that friend's father on the Chesapeake Bay, and that single trip changed everything.

From that moment on, John spent as much time sailing as he possibly could.

This sounds terrible, what I'm just kidding, Oh, just sailing sounds sailing, just sailing all the time.

No, it actually sounds like a cool hobby, I suppose if you like the water.

Throughout high school, whenever he wasn't in class, he was on the water.

After buying his first boat, he undertook a massive solo journey, sailing from Massachusetts to the Caribbean and then back again, a voyage that took roughly a year.

Okay, that sounds terrible, it does.

And he didn't stop there.

He went on to build his own boat, which he piloted to the Bahamas, and that experience opened doors, and before long he was getting steady work as a delivery captain, who's responsible for transporting boats long distances for their owners.

And he eventually moved to the Virgin Islands, where he took a job at a construction supply company and continued sailing every chance he got.

Jean's story with the sea began a little differently.

She had been living in New York City, but after growing tired of the cold weather, she made the decision to move to Saint Croix in the Virgin Islands.

The plan was pretty simple, she would stay for the winter season and then return north, but that plan didn't last very long.

She ended up landing a job on a fifty five foot or sixteen point eight meter charter boat, and instead of just one season, she stayed for nearly two years, and during that time she sailed throughout the Caribbean in the winter months and traveled up to Newport, Rhode Island each summer, and it was there that she gained hands on experience sailing larger vessels.

John and Jean met through a mutual friend in New York.

At the time, Jean was living in New York while John was based in San Diego.

Their relationship was long distance, but despite that, their connection held strong, and in nineteen eighty six, the two were married.

By two thousand and three, their lives had taken on a different shape.

John and Jean were both now living in San Diego with their four children.

Ben was fourteen years old, Amelia was twelve, Jack was seven, and Camille was just three.

John was running a successful construction company and from the outside life looked pretty stable and settled, But John had always carried a different dream for his family.

He had talked for years about taking his family on a long distance sailing journey, and Amelia would later recall that her father often spoke about sailing around the world with them someday, and in two thousand and three, several things came together at once that ultimately would put that plan in action.

John began noticing signs of a downturn in the real estate market, and at the same time he looked at his children's ages and realize this might be the only window where such a trip was even possible.

So John and Jean began planning would you ever sail around the world?

Zero percent?

If you could sail anywhere in the world, where would you go the aisles of Shoals and then back back in time for dinner?

For reference people, the aisles of Shoals aren't about They're like five miles off the New Hampshire coast, close to where daniellis.

Yes, very close.

I'm not a big open water person.

Yeah, I like, I enjoy going out in a boat for a couple hours, but I feel like that's my limit.

Yeah.

Also, sailing boats they just feel two close to the water.

Yeah.

Oh yeah, you just came back from a cruise.

A cruise is also not for me, but that's a very different experience, I'm sure than a small sailing boat.

Yeah, and that pleasantly surprised me.

I was terrified preparing, like going into that cruise, but ultimately it actually I didn't have the same anxiety that on it once I was on it that I had leading.

Up to it.

But I don't know.

These sail boats, they're just there's not much room for error, and I would just be scared of falling overboard or sinking, or sharks or pirates or I don't know, just lots of things that I don't want to have to worry about it.

That list could go on and on.

Yeah, so very cool for them to want to sail around the world.

I hope the kids also wanted to do this though.

Yes, So at this point they were all on board.

Pun intended perfect.

So John and Jean test sailed a catamaran around San Diego Bay, and Jean made her position pretty clear after this.

She would only agree to the trip if it was done on a catamaran with four children aboard.

She felt that the safety features on this particular type of boat were non negotiable.

So they said the youngest was three.

Did you say three?

Yeah, I mean that's three and seven were the younger ones?

Yeah, three, seven, twelve and fourteen.

Okay, they did ultimately settle on a fifty five foot catamaran called the Emerald Jane, which they purchased in Florida.

The boat had four separate bedrooms and an eighty foot mast, which is roughly twenty four meters tall, which would allow it to move swiftly while carrying plenty of supplies for a long journey.

And I guess this just goes to show how unfamiliar we are with you know, boats, and especially like sailboats and catamarans, because I don't know how you fit four bedrooms on a boat.

I mean, if you were a real estate agent, you would probably not call them bedrooms.

You would probably call them something like a cozy office nook.

Yeah, four nooks.

John completely refitted the boat himself before sailing it north to New York, and Gane and the children flew out to meet him there.

Their voyage officially began in August of two thousand and three in Long Island Sound, New York.

The plan was intentionally flexible.

They would spend the summer moored there in the Sound, making side trips throughout New England, and in October they would head south to the Caribbean.

After that they would decide whether to continue or end the journey, sell the bow and return home.

Along the way, they met another family who was also headed for the Caribbean, and that family had two children close in age to the Silverwood kids, and so the two families quickly bonded.

They sailed together to Bermuda before parting ways, and months later in April, they reconnected in Grenada.

So these friends ultimately encouraged them to go farther, to go through the Panama Canal and head across the Pacific to Tahiti.

Okay, and for any of my video game friends who have played Red Dead Redemption two, you know that it's really hot hard to say Tahiti without hearing it in Dutch's voice.

And there's a whole thing about this.

And I know Danielle's like, I don't know what you're talking about.

But the amount of times I actually, while I was writing this, as soon as Tahiti came up, I just went on this side quest, just watching videos from the game and laughing at Dutch saying Tahiti the whole time.

I'll have to show you.

Okay, send me a link.

I'll send you the link.

They decided to moor the Emerald Jane in Tahiti and fly back to San Diego so the kids could attend the school semester.

They planned to return to Tahiti on Father's Day and continue their journey.

Their next destinations would be Fiji and then finally Australia before heading home in time for the new school year in the fall.

However, as you mentioned, do the kids even want to do this?

Mm hmmm, Well, initially they did, and three still wanted to.

But it was the oldest Ben who didn't want to get back on the boat.

He wanted to stay in school, he wanted he wanted to hang out with his friends, and he didn't want to go back, you know, to to travel the seas with his family.

I think he got it out of his system and he was good.

I'm sure it is a very fun adventure.

But I can definitely see someone fourteen fifteen being like, all right, we've done this.

Can I have a couple of weekends just home to chill out, hang on my friends, do what I want to do?

Definitely, I mean that age range, that age really starts to rely on that social aspect of life as you're sort of coming into your own and it's those teen years where yeah, you care about your friends, you want to go to school and see people and hang out and have fun.

So getting back on a fifty five foot boat with five other family members is a lot.

And actually, the night before their flight back to Tahiti, he took the family car and disappeared.

I mean, that's one way to avoid leaving.

Yeah, he didn't even have his driver's license.

But he's like, no, you can't make me go.

He really didn't want to go, and this was pretty out of character for him, Like he wasn't one to rebel or act out, but he just wasn't feeling it.

But he did return about an hour before the family was scheduled to leave for the airport, and in the end he did board the plane and join them for the second leg of the trip.

But once back in Tahiti, everything felt rushed.

They were eager to get to Fiji because they had plans to meet friends who were flying there, and from everything that I read, if you are sailing, you do not set a tight schedule for yourself, and unfortunately that's what they were trying to do here, just so that they could meet up with their friends who were getting there at a specific time, and complicating things a little further, the boat's brand new autopilot system wasn't calibrating correctly, and there were also strong winds that were pushing through the region.

But despite these warning signs and against better judgment, they still decided to continue on to try to reach their next destination.

By the time they were hoping to about a day and a half later, roughly three hundred miles or about four hundred and eighty kilometers into the journey.

On June twenty fifth, two thousand and five, just before seven pm, everything unraveled.

The night was dark, there was no moon out yet, it was just pitch black.

The family was eating dinner when a pin that attached the boom to the mast suddenly broke.

From my understanding is the boom runs horizontally, okay, come from the mast, and that hold that secures the bottom of the sail, and then the sail you know, is secured along the side up the mast.

If that makes any sense, I.

Can picture it, okay, So I'm sure people who are more familiar with boats no better.

Anyway, the pin that attached that boom, it broke, and so they had to let down the sails and left and leaving the boat essentially just drifting.

They attempted to reattach to the boom, but in the darkness it was impossible, so they said, we're just going to wait until morning to deal with this.

After dinner, after cleanup, everyone just sort of went their separate ways.

They did always have someone on watch, and Amelia at this point had been on watch up on the top deck while.

They were all below.

Jeane was propped up in bed with her laptop about to watch a movie, and John was standing in the doorway of their stateroom just kind of trying to alleviate her stress because she was really concerned that they weren't going to make it to Fiji on time, even if.

They were to use the motor.

And Amelia around this time, had just finished her watch and she came downstairs handing her life jacket to Ben, who was up next.

For his watch for his shift.

And it was during this shift change that the boat was said to be running on autopilot, which was also the same system they'd been struggling with.

And I will say though.

That there were sources that said that they were not on autopilot, that there was always someone manning the boat, not leaving it to the autopilot, but based on several interviews that I read and watched, it sounds like it was put on autopilot just quickly for the shift change.

Okay, they were in the South Pacific with what they believed was over a mile or about one and a half kilometers of water beneath them, and Jeane later described the next sound as something like microphone feedback.

It was like an ear piercing screech.

The twin hulls of the Emerald Jane were grinding against something below, and every piece of the boat just seemed to be screaming.

John was thrown against the doorway and he was just immediately like confused.

And terrified, like what is going on on out there?

And that's when they heard Ben yelling from above reef and John just he was like, it can't be Coral.

We're miles and as he's running up the stairs in full panic mode to the deck to see what's going on.

And before we get into what happened next, I just want to add a bit more context to the area that they were currently going through.

And this came directly from John.

A Coral reef is part of a coral wall that extends from the surface all the way to the bottom of the ocean.

The water we were sailing on was more than a mile deep.

We had a pretty strong wind, about eighteen knots or roughly thirty three kilometers per hour coming from behind us.

It was a dark night, and the swells were running about eleven to fifteen feet or three point three to four point six meters.

Since the ocean is so deep there, its motion is unrestricted from our perception sailing on the surface, it created a very gradual rising and falling, virtually imperceptible when you're used to being at sea.

However, when that same wave pattern hits the coral wall, it compresses.

The result is that the waves get much higher and come more frequently, So it kind of sounds like yeah, at certain points they had about a mile between them and the bottom.

But as those waves that the boat was on, like you know, were coming and going, it was dropping that water level under them.

Mm hmm.

Amelia was yelling for her father, asking what happened.

Alarms were blaring, things were starting to break all around them.

The two youngest, Jack and Camille, were crying shaking, huddled on a couch in the lounge area and the Emerald Jane had ultimately struck a submerged reef in French Polynesia.

Waves between fifteen and twenty feet or about four point bis six to six meters lifted the boat and slammed it down again and again, tearing it apart with each wave.

John tried to reverse the engines to free them, and only the front jibsail was still up, but it had to come down immediately if the engines were going to work.

He pulled the thick line off the winch, but it snagged, and so Ben handed him a diving knife so that he could cut it quickly, and John ducked as the loose sail snapped past his face.

And I just can't imagine the chaos that's happening.

You have alarms, you have this boat that you're living on.

This is the only thing between you and the open ocean, just breaking under your feet.

It's also pitch black outside.

You have screaming, scared children.

I mean, I I just cannot imagine that.

No, that's so stressful.

Gene and Amelia began gathering supplies for the life raft.

The boat was still being ripped into pieces, while the family tried to work quickly to get everyone safe, and all of a sudden, a loud roar from behind the boat grabbed all their attention as they looked up to see a huge wave coming down toward the wreckage, and as it crashed down, it ripped the dinghy from the boat.

Oh no.

John ran for the radio and he instructed Ben to get the GPS position read out at the chart table while he attempted to call out for help.

May Day, may Day, may Day.

This is sailing vessel, Emerald, Jane.

We have struck a reef in position approximately sixteen degrees thirty five minutes south and we're sinking and in need of immediate assistance.

May Day, may Day.

He did hear some French voices, but no one was responding to his calls.

Jean was also trying to use the satellite phone and Ben was on another radio.

So they did have these emergency devices, these communication devices, and they were all trying all of them, and they weren't having luck.

With any of them.

Their last emergency device was the EPERB, which is an emergency position indicating radio beacon.

But you're not communicating with anyone in real time, so all they could do was activate that and just hope for the best, just hope someone picked up on this signal.

Poor satellite coverage in that area meant that only their boat name was able to go through.

But luckily he had reported their journey to whatever agency overseas boats in the water, the water authority there their official agency name exactly, but the Coastguard would start trying to locate them except the search area.

The search area was about two point one million square miles or five point four million square kilometers.

Can you imagine showing up to work and your boss is like, hey, we've gone active search for you.

It's just a few million miles.

Get going.

Yeah, this boat is actively sinking.

So time is of the essence.

If you could go scan that two point one million square miles.

Quickly, chop chop, get going.

So as the Coast Guard is doing that, the French authorities in Tahiti would also get involved.

However, a search wouldn't start until sunrise, and the Silverwoods did not have that time.

Back at the Rex site, lights began to flicker before the power went out completely.

So now not only do they not have daylight or even moonlight.

They don't have any power on the boat either.

They did have a life raft though, so even though the dinghy is seemingly gone at this point, they did have a life raft.

So John yelled for Ben to help him with that.

Another wave lifted the stern and the twenty five hundred pound mast tore loose and crashed down, and Jeane described it as coming down like how you twirl a baton, which is just to have this twenty five hundred pound pole essentially just coming down in that pattern.

Is it's not going to end?

Well, no, it's not.

This is stressing me out.

Same.

So it grazed Ben's head, which left him bleeding and a bit dazed and disoriented, and it also hit John, so it knocked him backwards where he hit his head, and a piece that's attached to it called a spreader came down and ended its fall on John's leg, so it had this is kind of.

Kind of graphic.

Just FYI fast forward like I guess fifteen seconds if you want.

So the spreader that was attached to the mast that now had John pinned, had cut through his leg almost entirely, and it was attached just by a tendon.

But John didn't really know that he the severity of his injury.

He didn't know what type of injury he had.

He just knew he was pinned at this point and that like he at first, you know, he had hit his head also.

So there's a lot going on for him to try to process and not much time to do so.

But in that moment, he was more worried about Ben.

Was Ben okay?

He yelled for his son, and he thankfully yelled back that he was okay, and he was just trying to free himself of the tangled lines that he'd been caught in.

And so once Ben was up and freed, he looked over and he saw that the life raft was lying on top of his dad, and he thought that's why his dad was screaming like he was, you know, just trapped under this life raft.

So Ben was able to pull the life raft off off of him, and he used a glow stick to just you know, put eyes on his dad, and that's when he saw that he was not screaming because he was under a life raft.

His leg was pinned under the mast, and he could see how bad.

Even though John couldn't, Ben could see how bad that injury was.

And all it took was John looking at Ben's face to realize, like, I'm not in a good I'm not in good shape right now.

Ben tried to lift the mast.

Of course, twenty five hundred pounds is not going to budge, and John cried out as another wave shifted its weight.

So not only is he pinned, and he has this spreader in place in his leg, it's moving around a lot, and that pain must have been absolutely unbearable.

So he pulled Ben close and he said, you've got to take over now, son, like you need to make the decisions.

And that's a lot to put on your fourteen year old.

But there was very little hope for John's state.

Right even if John got out from under the mast.

I think at that point he knew that he was seriously injured and he was not going to be able to do what needed to be done.

Absolutely.

So Ben nodded and he said, it'll be okay, Dad, I'm going to get you out of here.

Ben tied a tourniquet around John's leg, and then he and his mom Jean be the next seemingly impossible task of saving John, which not only included freeing him from the mast.

But there was another element of risk here because every wave that came over the deck of the boat, John was underwater.

He would be submerged, you know, every few every time a wave came on board.

So they're trying to get this mast off of him while also trying to keep him propped up so that he wasn't going to drown.

With each wave, they would wedge things under the mast, which would lift it little by little because it would just slowly like raise up a little with the water.

And about three and a half hours later, one massive black wave came crashing down, as they described it, which shifted the mast just enough Ben and Jean to push it off of John and pull him free.

But although he was free, they were far from being in the clear, and time was ticking and John was losing a lot of blood very quickly.

It's already been three hours.

Yeah, it took them about three and a half hours to free him from that.

So they were able to get the life raft into this little tidal pool area because as the tide subsided, more of the reef was exposed and they were able to find a little tidal pool in there where they put John, and they also put Jack and Camille in there, not only for their safety of course, but hoping that their body warmth against John would just benefit all three of them in there.

And it was Amelia the daughter, the oldest daughter, who stood chest deep in this tidal pool outside of the raft, holding it steady to keep it in place.

And while they were all just stranded on this reef, another large wave came down and essentially just really destroyed what was left of the Emerald chain just right in front of them.

And they also didn't know if any of their distress signals were picked up, so they did.

They were just standing here through the night, unaware if anyone was even looking for them yet.

But at dawn the following morning, the French Navy had sent a plane from Tahiti, and when the family saw it, Ben set off a flare to give them their location, and the crew signaled that they saw the family, but they were unable to land where the family had been stranded, so of course they couldn't communicate with the family, so they just they're down here like, oh, we're being rescued, and they just see this plane like flying back and forth over them before just like leaving right.

Oh my god, I think the lack of I mean, we've talked about it in other episodes, but the lack of communication is so must be so stressful because you see the plane, and even if the plane sees you, they just like give you like a thumbs up from the window that you cannot see exactly like we'll be back.

While unbeknownst to the silver Woods, the French Navy had alerted the Taputo family, who lived on a nearby island, of the wreckage.

And it was just this family of sixteen.

There were fourteen kids and the parents, and they just lived by themselves on this nearby island.

And so the French Navy was like, hey, you guys down there, could you help us?

Could you help us with this family that stranded at on a reef near your home island.

And they actually connected with this family via a message in a bottle.

Seriously, seriously, So, seven Polynesian men from this island arrived to the Rex site in a small motor boat and they rescued the stranded silver Woods and took care of them.

They brought them back to their island.

They fed them, they were like trying to give them gifts.

They were trying to just make them feel as comfortable as possible while waiting for a rescue helicopter, which did eventually come, and the helicopter would take them to Bora Bora.

After arriving in Bora Bora via the rescue helicopter, John was quickly taken to an awaiting jet that would transport him to a hospital in Tahiti.

Unfortunately, the stretcher didn't fit in the jet and it was a race against time because John's condition was deteriorating quickly, so they ended up being able to load him into the jet through a door at the belly of the plane.

But it was just like one hurdle after another.

This man just needs a hospital, this family just needs to be saved, and it was just, you know, logistically such a nightmare for these rescuers to try to get them all, you know, to safety, and especially John.

Probably like a cargo door they pulled him through, I would assume exactly.

They did make it to the hospital in time, where John was rushed into emergency surgery, which took place, just for a timeline's sake, around twenty four hours after the crash, So you know, that's a long time from the start to finally receiving that medical attention that he needed.

Again that that was no one's fault.

It's just again the location that it happened in and trying to get him to the right place and all of the you know, setbacks and challenges they faced.

Right the logistics of all of it, Like you said.

John had lost seventy percent of his blood and for reference, losing more than forty percent is typically fatal without immediate medical intervention.

His left leg was amputated just below the knee, but he did survive, which is just a miracle.

And they are a very.

Faithful family, and they do a tribute getting through all of this to God and their faith in God and them praying to make it out alive and for everyone to be safe.

I mean, honestly, to only have thirty percent of your blood volume remaining, it's really hard to say that that's anything but a miracle.

Absolutely.

Doctors did say that he was just moments from succumbing to his injuries and blood loss, so they really did just make it there in the nick of time.

The family were in Tahiti for two weeks before getting back home to San Diego, where John had to be immediately hospitalized again upon arrival, and he even had a second surgery to amputate even more to just above his knee.

After the ordeal, the whole family was diagnosed with PTSD.

John and Jack seemed to be affected the worst by it, and Jack actually started to rebel a bit, but he did get back on track after some Bible study sessions.

Was this seven year old, Yes, okay.

Yep, so you know, luckily, I mean, a situation like that could cause anyone to spiral, Oh yeah, and understandably so, you know, So for their family.

Who.

You know, is very tight knit and a.

You know, family of faith, to see you know, their young sons starting to rebel a bit, I'm sure was just hard to watch.

So it's good that he was able to kind of come back pretty quickly from that.

And I'm sure knowing the likely cause of his behavior change is the tough part.

It would be different if he was just you know seven, just kind of you know, getting a little bit of the elementary age attitude a little bit, that would be one thing.

But I'm sure just knowing that the trauma they went through is the likely cause had to be extra hard for the.

Parents definitely, and two years after the incident.

John's first return trip to the water was in August of two thousand and seven with the family that they had spent time with at the beginning of their journey.

So, you know that family that they had headed down to Bermuda with.

Well, Gene noticed that John didn't seem as invested in his interests as he had been before.

You know, he was obviously huge into sailing his entire life.

Now all of a sudden, you know, he's not really reading his sailing magazines, He's not really doing a whole lot when it came to his passion.

And so she had reached out to that those friends and she had kind of told them what was going on, and so they invited him on an eight day sailing trip from New Zealand to New Caledonia.

I think after an event like that, they should have just gone out to the aisles of shoals for a couple hours and back.

You're like, guys, like, just ease into this, right.

So he did go on that trip, and Amelia went on to be a chef on a megayacht and Jack went to college in Northern California, where he would enjoy surfing, so the family didn't seem to shy away from the water as one could have understandably expected them to.

And on Thursday August seventeenth, twenty seventeen, John, who was sixty five at the time, began his Redemption sailing trip alone.

So he would sail his thirty eight foot Cutter sailboat, which was appropriately named Espiritusanto which means Holy Spirit.

Okay, as he feels that ultimately it was his faith that allowed him and his family to survive that ordeal.

So they got this new boat and he was going to sail it from San Diego to Hawaii as part of his healing process from the accident.

He said, I know it must sound crazy, but there is a part of me I want to rebuild that I need to rebuild, and the only way I can do this is by going back to see alone.

So he did do that trip, and he did have people monitoring that trip.

It was successful.

He was able to do that for himself, which I'm sure was very significant in his healing journey.

Oh definitely.

And also as an amputee, John wanted to use his experience to help others.

Fitted with a high tech prosthetic.

He then began devoting his life to taking other amputees and critically ill people to see on day sales while lecturing around the world about you know what he took from there his own family's ordeal and their sailing outreach program is called God's Swell and its mission statement is to provide healing and hope to those physically challenged by a disabil or illness through the tranquility and adventure of sailing.

And I always think it's cool when we see these causes that come from someone's otherwise horrific experience, right.

Because how many people were they able to support and you know, show a new offer them, like a new type of therapy out on the water that otherwise would not have had those opportunities.

Definitely, And for someone like John who again with his passion being sailing, his passion being out on the water and having his own traumatic experience and now being an amputee, he didn't they didn't just come back with like emotional scars from that he lost his leg.

I mean, that's a huge life altering situation.

So for him to be able to take these people out and share his passion with them is probably very cathartic for everyone involved.

The emerald Jane was lost, of course, and the family returned home changed in ways they would carry for the rest of their lives.

Recovery was long and uneven, with the impact of that night touching each of them differently.

What remained was the truth of what they endured, a deeper faith in God, and a new direction forged in its aftermath.

Yikes.

You know there are some cases that I listened to you tell the stories, and you know, I have a mental image of what's happening, but it's maybe not super clear, but for whatever reason, like I had a mental image of this whole situation, and it's just really scary.

I'm curious if the outcome would have been different if Ben had not joined them for the second leg of that trip, because he played a pivotal role in how everything was handled that night, and I just wonder if things would have been different if he had not been there to help in the ways that he had.

Oh, I definitely think that him being there likely saved his father, absolutely.

I mean, Jane was doing all she could, but would it have been enough or was it a only possible because Ben and her were able to work on to do that together.

So, I mean this one just the scene is just so stressful to think about.

I cannot imagine what they were going through.

But it's incredible that they all made it out alive.

It really is.

There is a book that they wrote called Black Wave.

There's some really good information in there.

They go in depth about a lot of it.

They also did several interviews, so it's always nice to have that opportunity to hear someone's experience straight from them.

Yeah, definitely.

Yeah, So that's I think that does it for the for today's episode.

All right, start my morning with some ocean anxiety.

Well, luckily you don't have to subject yourself to any open water today.

No, just go into the office, not the ocean.

It's just a different type of nightmare, correct.

All right, Well, thanks for listening, and if you're on Patreon, we'll see you later this week, and if not, we'll see you