“I opened my eyes and felt the sting of salt water. I waited for my vision to clear. When it did, my stomach contracted. A cold sword of fear stabbed through me. I didn’t believe what I was seeing. I didn’t want to believe it. Now I knew what had been bumping Mark’s legs. Sharks. There were sharks everywhere. Dozens, no, hundreds of them – as far as I could see. Some were so close I could see the membrane hooding their lifeless, clouded eyes. Others were just slow-moving angular shadows spiralling into the depths.”
Another raft-survival memoir, which I was inspired to read following the accounts of Steven Callahan and Maurice and Maralyn Bailey. The blurb on the dust jacket pretty much tells you everything:
“From the moment Debbie Scaling left Southwest Harbour in Maine she had misgivings about both the crew and the 58-foot Boothbay Challenger yacht. Yet, although she was an experienced sailor, she ignored her instincts and embarked on the voyage to Florida to deliver the boat – the aptly named Trashman – to its owner. They never made it.
Halfway through their voyage, the Trashman sank in a ferocious storm. Debbie and her four crew-mates were left on a tiny rubber dinghy in the middle of a raging ocean. They spent the first night in the water, under the upside-down inflatable, trying to keep warm. In the morning they discovered the water was infested with sharks. Back in the dinghy they covered themselves with seaweed for warmth – but were bitten by the creatures in it. They were attacked by birds, developed hideous sores, and with no food, no water, and inadequate clothing they began to hallucinate. Driven beyond endurance, two of the crew drank seawater and, little by little, went mad. With the others too weak to stop them they swam off and didn’t survive. The skipper’s girlfriend also died – of exposure and gangrene.
After days of this living nightmare, and resigned to their fate at the mercy of the sea Debbie and her only surviving crewmate, Brad, were rescued by a Russian ship.”
It’s a fairly harrowing read, not least because the incompetent “crew” (including two men with drink problems) are constantly at each other’s throats. There’s little unity, making a scary situation even more terrifying: “Then Meg was shouting at John again and John was shouting back and Mark was ranting and I felt myself drowning in the sound of their voices, the whining, the shouting, the crying, the complaining. Why couldn’t everyone just be quiet? I saw John kick Meg. He was doing it on purpose. She wailed and he kicked her again.”
The horror doesn’t end with the rescue. Deborah endures a decade of post-traumatic stress disorder and battles bulimia and depression as she struggles to comprehend what happened. She also files a lawsuit against the US coastguard, who she considers negligent. Inexplicably, the official reports claimed that the Trashman had arrived safely at its destination.
With marriage, motherhood, the writing of this book and a return to sailing she eventually starts to move on with her life. An extremely gripping story, it makes for a sobering read.
Postscript: it’s heartbreaking to learn that the tragedy continued. Debbie’s marriage ended. Her son John Coleman Kiley IV died by drowning in 2009, aged just 23. And Debbie herself died in 2012, aged 54.
“...the ocean us like a snarling dog,” she writes at one point; “it can sense when you are afraid.”
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