An experienced crew, a luxury yacht, and a brutal storm that will test their will to survive
Sailing was in Deborah Kiley’s blood from an early age. Before taking on the job of crewing the luxury yacht, the Trashman, from Maine to Toronto, she had done it all.
Texas-born, she had completed the Whitebread Round the World Race at the age of 23 and was accustomed to crewing vessels of all shapes and sizes. She was a natural, respected the sea for its ferocity and unpredictability, but had confidence in her ability to handle whatever the elements threw at her.
Her 4 fellow crew members hired to sail the Trashman felt the same. They were all experienced sailors and were always ready for the unexpected. They were wrong. And were going to discover that the sea was a force of nature that was way too powerful for them to believe they could conquer.
The fateful trip started in October 1982, when the 58-foot yacht briefly stopped over in Annapolis, Maryland, after setting sail from Maine. The weather, which at first seemed calm and tranquil as they skimmed across the deep blue, soon turned nasty and turbulent.
The crew, captained by John Lippoth, consisting of Meg Mooney, Brad Cavanagh, and Mark Adams, were unprepared for the dramatic change in the weather conditions. They were all used to sailing in rough weather, but every one of them had to admit that on day two of their six-day journey, they were in deep trouble.
When the storm descended on them in all its ferocity, it carried with it 110kph winds and created 10m waves that loomed above the sailors briefly before slamming into the sailing ship time and time again.
Yet there was no sense of panic amongst them, just a steely determination to get through it, working in shifts as a team to conserve energy as they navigated the violent storm like the professionals they were.
When disaster struck, Kiley was fast asleep in her bunk while above the captain was drunk at the wheel.
Water rushing into her cabin startled her awake, and she instinctively knew that they were sinking.
Above, Mark Adams managed to inflate a life raft before they all leaped into the raging ocean, the Trashman floundering behind them, sinking fast. Immediately, shark fins popped up around the dinghy, the mighty predators sensing that it was feeding time.
They could smell the blood oozing from Meg Mooney’s leg that had been injured in her escape from the capsizing Trashman, and it was driving them crazy. The sharks pulled, tugged, and bumped the dinghy in an effort to capsize it; all the terrified crew could do over the next few days was hang on and pray that the next nudge wouldn’t serve them up to the sharks.
It was a desperate situation, made worse, not just by the bad weather, but because of the lack of food and water. The 5 sailors weren’t that far from the coast but they were a long way from being rescued.
Before long, dehydration clouded the judgment of Captain John Lippoth and Mark Adams, who, in desperation, opted to drink seawater to slake the thirst that was driving them crazy. It was a fateful mistake.
Drinking seawater not only compounds dehydration but induces hallucinations and quickly starts to shut down the kidneys.
The other 3 sailors resisted, Kiley covering herself in seaweed to keep warm, Cavanaugh barely hanging on mentally, and Mooney near delirious from the infection in her leg.
On day three Lippoth and Adams were too far gone, mumbling incoherently, seeing salvation that simply wasn’t there. For Lippoth, it was an imaginary island and safety that saw him suddenly stand up and hurl himself overboard.
His splashdown was quickly followed by a blood-curdling scream as the sharks swooped in, their powerful jaws clamping on and dragging him underwater in a few bloody seconds.
The stunned silence that enveloped the survivors didn’t last very long as Adam’s delirium overtook his survival instincts. Deciding in his severely dehydrated mind that he fancied going out for a beer and a cigarette, he followed his deceased Captain over the side, straight into the slavering jaws of the waiting sharks.
Meg Mooney passed away from the infection in her leg shortly after and, with no other option, Kiley and Cavanaugh, slipped her body overboard. Watching as the sharks consumed their third crewmate in a feeding frenzy, they could but wonder in the feeble state that they were both in, which one of them would be next.
The fourth day in the dinghy was soul-destroying, dehydration slowly shutting their system down, their minds playing tricks on them.
Day five was worse, both of them contemplating ways to end the torment, wondering if the next time they closed their eyes would be the last time.
At one point, while cleaning the dinghy to eliminate any infected blood and pus that had oozed from Mooney’s leg, Cavanaugh slipped and fell overboard.
Kiley tried to drag him back on board, but she was too weak. Cavanaugh tried to pull himself back to safety but his strength gave out. And the sharks closed in.
What saved him was the appearance of the Olenegorsk. Spotting the Russian vessel gave him the impetus and a desperate burst of energy that propelled him back to safety with what little help Kiley could offer.
After 5 days of hell, they were saved.
Unsurprisingly, the ordeal forever affected both of their lives.
Mentally scarred, Brad Cavanaugh faced his inner demons head-on after a period of physical and mental recovery and returned to sailing the seas. Deborah Kiley, on the other hand, endured years of nightmares filled with the screams of her dying shipmates.
She got married, twice, had two children, wrote two books about her traumatic experience, and even became a motivational speaker.
She never sailed again, however. Those 5 days stranded in shark-infested waters never knowing if she was going to live or die, would haunt her for the rest of her days and she had no wish to relive the experience.
On August 13, 2012, at the age of 54, Deborah Kiley passed away in her new home in Mexico, cause of death unknown. Her legacy will forever be one of a strong woman who had survived where others would have surrendered, who used her story to inspire others to fight on no matter how dire the situation at first appeared.
