Real Survival Stories - Seven-Hour Swim: Real-Life Jaws

Episode Date: August 5, 2026

It’s August 1981. On a lazy Sunday, an impromptu sailboat trip around the coastal waters of Volusia County, Florida seems the perfect way to enjoy the sunshine. But then things start to unravel. One small setback becomes a series of disasters, leaving Tami Ennis and her friends stranded miles offshore, clinging to the underside of their sinking boat. Now they face a momentous choice. Stay where they are and risk drifting further out to sea? Or swim for land, through a stretch of water known as the shark bite capital of the world…  A Noiser podcast production. Hosted by John Hopkins. Written by Joe Viner | Produced by Ed Baranski | Assistant Producer: Luke Lonergan | Exec produced by Joel Duddell | Sound Supervisor: Matt Peaty | Sound design by Jacob Booth | Assembly edit by Rob Plummer, Dorry Macaulay | Compositions by Oliver Baines, Dorry Macaulay, Tom Pink | Mix & mastering: Ralph Tittley. For ad-free listening, bonus material and early access to new episodes, join Noiser+. Click the subscription banner at the top of the feed to get started. Or go to noiser.com/subscriptions If you have an amazing survival story of your own that you’d like to put forward for the show, let us know. Drop us an email at [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's Monday, August 10th, 1981, Florida's Atlantic Coast. A near, unbroken, 400-mile sweep of golden sand, fringed by rows of swaying palms, and punctuated by soaring beachfront condos. Each year, millions of visitors flock to this coastline, to stay in its luxury hotels, play its golf courses, and enjoy its balmy weather. But the main draw to this part of the world is the ocean.

Heated by Gulfstream currents pulling warm water from the tropics, Florida's stretch of the Atlantic has more in common with the Caribbean than it does with the rest of the East Coast. A glittering azure expanse. But Florida's coastal waters are notable for something else, something you wouldn't find on the cover of any tourist brochure. Because all the qualities that make this stretch of ocean so enticing for humans, its temperature, its plentiful fish, its quiet, tidal inlets, also make it a perfect habitat for sharks. Today the ocean off the

coast of Volusia County, Florida is calm, the shade of blue one degree darker than the sky. A warm breeze blows, corrugating the water's surface. With more unprovoked attacks than anywhere on the planet, Florida is the shark bite capital of the world. And of those attacks, the majority of them occur here, along Volusia County's 47 miles of coastline. About six miles offshore, out of sight of land, Tammy Ennis keeps her gaze fixed on the sky as she swims a steady backstroke. Clad only in a bikini, the 21-year-old skin is blistered and peeling. Her eyes burn from the saltwater, but her face is a picture of concentration. I was going, okay, all I have to do is,

swim. And that was in my mind. Not that I was tired, not that I was cold, not that I was thirsty, or how long it would take, nothing. I said, all I have to do is stroke. The sea spreads out around her, miles and miles of featureless ocean, criss-crossed by powerful surge in currents. Below her, the fathoms plunge away into an immense black void, where animals, twice Tammy's eyes lurk in the shadows. But guided by the position of the sun, she stays focused, following as best she can a straight course west in the direction of land. She can feel the water flowing past her face, the distance ebbing away meter by meter. Eventually she will get there. Tammy just needs to keep swimming and hope she doesn't encounter anything unpleasant along the way.

I was thinking of everything that's in the sea and the ocean, but they were all further down underwater, and I was thinking I'll just stay on the surface and swim. And then it was like right after that that I felt a bump on my leg. Ever wondered what you would do when disaster strikes? If your life depended on your next decision, could you make the right choice? Welcome to real survival stories. These are the astonishing tales of ordinary people thrown into extraordinary situations. situations. People suddenly forced to fight for their lives. In this episode, we meet 21-year-old Tammy Ennis.

One Sunday morning in August 1981, Tammy, a waitress in Daytona Beach, Florida, joins a sailboat trip just off the coast. For a while, it's all fun and games, until things start to unravel. Through a series of escalating calamities, Tammy and three others will find themselves stranded, six miles offshore, clinging to the hull of their capsized boat. As time progressed, we couldn't keep our feet on the pontoon anymore. We were sliding off, so we had to straddle so the pontoon was actually going under. Trapped on a sinking vessel and faced with the possibility of drifting further out to sea, the forsoom will have little choice but to try to swim for land,

testing their luck against the ocean and the fearsome creatures for which this part of Florida is notorious. You don't even calculate how long you've been swimming, how long even out there's nothing. You don't think about any of that stuff. You're swimming and there's the goal line and you've got to try and make it. I'm John Hopkins. From the Noiser Podcast Network, this is real survival stories. It's Sunday, August 9th, 1981 in Daytona Beach, Florida. Tammy Ennis rolls over in bed and groggily opens her eyes.

dust swirls in the ribbons of sunlight filtering through cracks in the blinds. It's morning. Tammy yawns, stretches, and glances at her bedside table with the blurry digits of her alarm clock gradually come into focus. The 21-year-old groans and buries her face in the pillar. I'd actually overslept that day, and it was usually the day I go watch the softball. The waiters, bartenders in Daytona,

I would always have softball games and stuff on this day, and I had overslept. Tammy gets out of bed and pads through to the kitchen. She pours herself a cup of coffee, then wanders over to the couch, which is when the telephone rings. Tammy gets up, walks across the room, and picks up the receiver. Immediately her brow furrows with surprise. It's her old neighbor, a college student named Brandy. He used to live next door to Tammy before she moved into this. condo, and while the two had always been perfectly cordial, they weren't exactly close.

But Tammy's surprise at hearing from Randy only deepens when she hears what he's calling to say. A friend of his from Embry Riddle, the local aeronautical college, has invited Randy and his girlfriend, Christy, to spend the day on his sailboat. This friend, a guy named Daniel, is single, and Randy presents it to Tammy as a potential blind date, if she's interested. I'm sure I laugh because nobody had set me up on a blind date before. And like I said, we weren't that close of friends. Of course, Emery Riddle, I was kind of prestigious, the pilot school there and stuff.

So I thought, that's going to be cool. But yeah, yeah, I was excited. Tammy tells Randy she's on board. He says they'll meet her down at the beach in an hour or so. She puts the phone down, smiling. After oversleeping and missing her softball game, this feels like a serendipitous turn of events. Tammy has lived in Daytona Beach for two years,

and while she could easily pass for a son-kissed Florida native, she is actually a Midwestern hailing from America's rural heartland. I actually was born in Indiana, in a small town, lived there for probably about six, eight years, and then moved to Kansas City, a bigger city, in Missouri, and lived there about the same amount, another eight years or so. And then I moved back to Indiana. My father was actually a...

coach in high schools, and we moved back to Indiana, and a really small town after I'd lived in a city for a while. Tammy, her parents, and her older brother eventually settled in the small town of Mentone, a scattering of houses grouped around the intersection of two state highways. Surrounded by nothing but acres of flat cornfields, there isn't much to put Mentone on the map, except that is, for one, boast-worthy distinction. The Egg Capital of the World, There you go. That's something. They had a big egg in the middle of the city, the egg capital.

It's proud, poultry history aside, Menton didn't have much to offer an adventurous, outward-looking young person like Tammy, who had always had a yearning for the big, wide world beyond her small town. My father was in the Korean War. I always had a map on the wall my whole life with all these little tags on it, a place he'd been. And so since I was young, I always wanted to move and, you know, see him. the world. So after I graduated high school, I wanted to get the heck out of there. So I was in this really small town. I don't know how many people, maybe a thousand people or something. It was crazy. So from there is when I moved to Florida and started my beach life. Goodbye to the Midwest. Hello to the Sunshine State. Tammy found a job as a waitress in

Daytona Beach, a coastal resort popular with tourists and college kids on spring break. She made friends among the local community of bar and restaurant staff and spent a free time in true 1980s Florida fashion, partying and going to the beach. And it was fun for a while. But now it's been two years. And like the neon lit motels that line the Daytona boardwalk, the sheen is beginning to wear off.

I was going to the beach every day. You just party at night and all that kind of stuff. And I've been there a couple years. And I was just getting tired of that. It's like I wanted to do something else. So I was actually planning on moving. In a few weeks time, Tammy and a friend are moving 400 miles north to Atlanta, where there are more opportunities for young people.

It promises to be a shake-up, a much-needed change of scenery. But before she leaves, what's the harm in making the most of her time here? Today's trip might well be the last chance she gets to go out on a boat and soak up a few more drops of Florida sunshine. It's a couple of hours later. Tammy sits on the beach, sipping rum and coke from a plastic cup. Christy, Randy's girlfriend, sits beside her. Christy is 19, a college student from Chicago

with long, fair hair and bright, lively eyes. Tammy likes her, though she's different from her usual crowd. The same can be said for Daniel, a handsome, straight-laced young man who declines to partake in the rum and coax when offered. The kind of friends that I hung out with were bar people, waiters, bartenders. We were always street skating and stuff like that.

back in the day, street skating to the pool halls or street skating to the beach. And we had what we called a beachcomber, which is a bike with the big tires on it, so he could ride on the beach and stuff. But for not having much money, we had a lot of fun. But he was just, you know, Daniel really wasn't involved in any of that. Daniel spends a little while rigging up the boat. Then he calls out to the others, and they make their way down the beach towards the vessel bobbing in the shallows. The boat is a lightweight 17-foot catamaran.

It consists of two parallel pontoons connected by a raised mesh trampoline, which provides the main seating area. A crossbeam at the front supports a slender 20-foot mast where two sails, a mane and a jib, flutter in the breeze. Tammy and the others climb aboard, the trampoline sagging beneath their weight as they get settled.

Tammy loves the ocean, but she doesn't know anything about sailing. The catamaran is small and feels a little frail, but they don't plan on taking it out far beyond the beach. Because of this, they have overlooked certain safety measures. There weren't life jackets on there, as far as I know. And, you just don't think about it. It's just a small catamaran.

And again, because we weren't going that far out, we just never really talked about it. Daniel guides them out beyond the breakers. It's a beautiful day. The sky is feathered with delicate clouds and a light breeze ruffles the Atlantic. Tammy and the others laugh and joke, trailing their hands in the water.

About a mile out, Daniel furls the sails. Tammy stretches out on the trampoline, closes her eyes and relaxes to the gentle, bobbing motion of the boat. They whial away a couple of hours like this, lounging, talking, and sunning themselves. When all of a sudden, Tammy notices that the catamaran is no longer sitting evenly on the surface of the water. That's when I noticed that the back pontoon was going down. And so he opened up the little screw cap on the hole and he saw that there was water in there.

The screw cap covers a six-inch-wide plug hole, which allows access to the hollow interior of the pontoon. Somehow it has come loose, causing water to leak inside and affect. the buoyancy. Still, no cause for panic. Daniel sails them back to the beach, where they pull the boat onto the sand. The issue is with the screw caps plastic threads. They're not binding properly. A few strips of heavy-duty water-resistant tape should be enough to seal it back up and get their day back on track. Back in the day, duct tape fixes everything, so that's what we were told by our parents. and so we got the duct tape and he sealed it back up and we just went back out. This August on the Noiser Podcast Network, Jane Austen Stories returns.

This time Dame Julie Andrews will be reading another beloved classic Emma. Step into the village of Highbury, home to the handsome and clever Emma Woodhouse. Witness the delicate art of matchmaking where appearances can deceive and true affections are not always easily guessed. On short history off, we're herring around the world with the groundbreaking journalist Nellie Bly and grappling with the surreal with Salvador Dali. On real survival stories, we're in the shark-filled waters off the coast of Florida and trundling down the Bardsville track deep in the Australian bush. And in Sherlock Holmes short stories, Holmes investigates the disappearance of a missing star rugby player

in The Adventure of the Missing Three Quarter. Get all of these shows and more early and ad-free on Noise Apply. It's about an hour later, around 3 p.m. Tammy and the others are back out on the boat, roughly a mile offshore. The makeshift repairs seem to be holding up well, and the mood on the catamaran is relaxed. The issue with the screw cap already feels like a minor hiccup in an otherwise seamless day out. But then the sky darkens. I just started seeing some black clouds coming, and they were odd.

They were gray clouds, so they were almost like, almost like, A funnel cloud, but sideways, so they were spinning, like, parallel to the shore. It all happens quite suddenly. That odd cylindrical cloud that Tammy saw forming above the coast now rolls outward, unspooling until the clear blue sky above the catamaran has turned the color of slate, growling and rumbling and sparking with flash pops of lightning. As the rain starts sheeting down, Daniel tries to manipulate the sails, to guide them back to shore. but the eye of the storm must be right on top of them.

And there isn't a trace of wind. All they can do is sit and wait. So we're just sitting there, and that's when once again we saw that the pontoon was going down in the back. Just like before, one of the pontoons has slumped lower in the ocean. Daniel removes the cap and starts trying to bail out the rain and seawater sloshing around inside. Though there is no wind, there are still waves, driven by the tide and by distant swells, and each breaker that rolls over the pontoon dumps more water inside the hull, which continues to sink.

And we were trying to get the water out as it was coming in, of course, silly us, the waves were coming over now, and water was going in, we were trying to get it out, tried to put the cap back on, and sure enough, after a bit, it just tipped over. Eventually, enough water leaks into the pontoon that it throws off the boat's equilibrium. The catamaran flips lengthways, the stern dropping below the waves as the prow shoots up vertically. The four people on board are catapulted into the ocean. Tammy surfaces blinking seawater from her eyes. Once they regain their composure, the foursum start trying to push the boat back into a horizontal position.

and after a few attempts they succeed. The catamaran writes itself, and Tammy and the others scrambled back on board, exchanging a few sheepish grins. They wave towards the beach, whistling and shouting, but they can't seem to make themselves heard. Meanwhile, the rain still hammers down, and water continues to leak into the pontoon.

We had talked about getting saved by another boat, and we'll be in the newspaper or something because we're out here in a boat that, head capsized. And that's when it flipped over the second time. This time, the catamaran tips over sideways with a mast flat against the sea. And that's when we knew we were in trouble because there's no way to pull that boat back up that way. The second time it went over, we just, I think, I mean, I remember, we were just all, like, silent because we just jumped in the water and as it was falling over and we just couldn't believe it.

Tammy and the others heave themselves up onto the only part of the boat's hull still visible, the second pontoon, a narrow length of slippery fiberglass. They pulled their legs up and sit with their arms wrapped around their knees. Tammy scans the turbid, rain-churned water around them. All of us had shark in our head. We're always thinking about shark when you're out there. The second time we pretty much all knew that we weren't going to be able to get it back up and we're just going to have to sit and wait.

So that's what they do. Eventually a boat will pass by, or someone on the beach will spot them, or the Coast Guard will get a call. But an hour passes, and then another, and still nothing. After a while, Tammy has to pull her legs up a little higher to keep her feet out of the water. The waves are beginning to lap at her toes.

Earlier, Daniel reassured everyone that catamaranes are designed to stay afloat, even if structural damages rendered them immobile. I remember he had told us that catamaranes don't sink, it'll stay buoyant, but as time progressed, we couldn't keep our feet on the pontoon anymore. We were sliding off, so we had to straddle, so the pontoon was actually going under. It's 6 p.m. about a mile of the coast of Volusia County, Florida. Three hours have passed since the catamaran capsized for the second.

time, and the atmosphere on what's left of the boat is growing tense. As the submerged pontoon steadily fills with water, the other one that they're sitting on is being slowly dragged down with it. Tammy, ever the optimist, does what she can to keep things light. We talked and stuff, and I remember in the beginning, I was singing trying to make a joke of it, as usual, and singing right in the storm out and some other water songs, which they didn't appreciate. but I was trying to keep our spirits up. But as night approaches, even Tammy struggles to remain upbeat.

The pontoon settles lower in the ocean, making it harder to balance with their knees pulled into their chests. Contending with waves and driving rain, they have to awkwardly straddle the fiberglass boat, their legs dangling in the murky water. Efforts to flag someone down on the shore have failed, and they don't seem to be any other boats out here. Daniel, the only experienced sailor among them, tries to reassure the others that the tidal currents will eventually push them back towards land.

Tammy isn't so sure. As dusk settles, twinkling beacons appear along the coast, the lights of the hotels and departments that line Daytona's seafront. But these lights seem to be getting fainter. Tammy calls over to Daniel, her voice brittle with anxiety. I told him that we're going out farther and farther. He was going to know the currents are going this way, so we're going to be going back in. And, you know, I was like, no, we're going farther out.

The others are unconvinced, but Tammy is certain. And if they are drifting further out, it means now is the time to act. Tammy was on her high school swim team. It's been years since she competed, but she's confident in the water and she volunteers to swim the mile or so back to shore. I thought, you know, I could do it.

And so it was Daniel or Randy that ended up telling me that I can't go because dusk is when the sharks feed. They go closer to shore. You're going to be swimming in there and it's going to be feeding time. They were saying, just, you know, if we all stay together, stay on here. Somebody's got to come at some point. Tammy agrees to stay put. The key here is to remain calm and rational and not do anything drastic.

Surely, eventually, they'll be picked up. At some stage, it stops raining and the sky clears. Another few hours pass. And then from the blackness above. The first thing we saw was the plane. That was hours and hours later. It was after it got really dark that we heard a plane, a small plane coming. And it had lights, it had a light shining on the water.

So then we knew somebody's looking for us. The plane flies a looping figure eight above the water, the beam of its searchlight scouring the waves. It doesn't come close enough to spot the upturned catamaran, but its very presence is reassuring. Not long after the sighting of the plane, another welcome sound drift through the darkness. Daniel recognizes it immediately.

He knew it was like a Coast Guard cutter. He could hear the engine, even though it was miles from us. And so he goes, they must have sent a boat out for us. That confirms it. It's only a matter of time now before they're found. That's when we started all hippie-happy and everything's great. We're going to have a party.

You know, we're going to get back to shore and everybody's going to be, you know, flipping out. And so we all said what we wanted. And somebody said, strawberry daugher is the first thing I'm going to have. And somebody else said, a cheeseburger. and they're going, I'm going to get off and I'm going to kiss the ground when I get there. And just, you know, just talking happy because we were sure that everything was going to be fine. Tammy listens, hopes soaring as the boat chugs towards them. I don't know how long it was, maybe an hour or something before it got to us.

And it was so close. Somewhere in the darkness nearby, the boat cuts its engines. Tammy and the others start yelling and whistling, emptying, their lungs into the night air. They wait, ears pricked, as the echoes of their voices drift away on the breeze, until... We hear the engines start up, and they go off a little bit further north, and nothing happens. So at that, that was the time, you know, kind of realized how small we were, how small we were

in the ocean. And even with the moon kind of reflecting, and that is still, we just had that sinking feeling. that we weren't going to be found. So I just kind of made that resolution that we're going to probably have to wait this out till day. It's around midnight. Tammy, Daniel, Christy and Randy sit in single file on the pontoon.

A subdued silence has settled over the group. Tammy, dressed only in her bikini, started to shiver violently, making it even more difficult to keep her balance. The sea now left. lapse around their waists as the foundering boat continues its slow, inexorable downward slide. Eventually it will disappear from underneath them, dropping to the silty sediment of the seabed, leaving those on board to tread water on their own. All they can do is hope they get picked up before that happens.

By now, the possibility that they might be drifting further out to sea has become an indisputable fact. All four of them look back towards land, where the bright, Light lights along the coast gradually recede to tiny flickering embers. The lights just kept getting dimmer, and we could tell they weren't turning off. It wasn't that they were turning off. They were just getting dimmer and dimmer. And everyone saw that it looks like we're going further out. Tammy focuses intently on the dim, dwindling lights.

But eventually, even that one small source of comfort is extinguished. So at some point, the lights completely disappeared. So we knew we were mild. miles out by that time. So we just basically tried to keep each other warm and then we're looking everywhere. We thought, surely we're going to see something, a ship, some fishing boat, something,

even though we were far out. But as the night goes on, those hopes fade. By now, Tammy and the others are submerged up to their chests. Maybe this is the moment to cut their losses and swim for land. After all, the longer they delay, the greater the distance back to shore. But now, in the pitch dark, it's impossible to tell east from west. They could just as easily be swimming further out to sea.

Paddling off into the blackness is too terrifying. Whatever they decide to do next, they're going to have to wait until morning. This August on the Noiser Podcast Network, Jane Austen Stories returns. This time Dame Julie Andrews will be reading another beloved classic, Emma. Step into the village of Highbury, home to the handsome and clever Emma Woodhouse. Witness the delicate art of matchmaking, where appearances can deceive, and true affections are not always easily guessed. On short history of, we're herring around the world with the groundbreaking journalist Nellie

Bly and grappling with the surreal with Salvador Dali. On real survival stories, we're in the shark-filled waters off the coast of Florida and trundling down the Bardsville track deep in the Australian bush. And in Sherlock Holmes short stories, Holmes investigates the disappearance of a missing star rugby player in The Adventure of the Missing Three Quarter. Get all of these shows and more early and ad-free on Noiser Plus. It's about four hours later. Tammy sits pressed against the trembling body of the person in front. Her teeth chatter and the bare skin of her legs chafes against the plastic of the pontoon.

Aware of a slight easing of the darkness, she looks over her shoulder. I just turned my head and I saw the horizontal crack of dawn. So I could see it on the horizon. I could see the light. And that's when I was telling them, I said, okay, so that's that way. Shores the other way. And if it gets lighter and we can't see shore, it's going to be harder. So I said if we can see that and get started in the right direction,

I told him I was going to swim. Soon, the choice will be made for them. The pontoon feels moments away from sinking entirely, with the chilly Atlantic now lapping around their necks. There are some voices of dissent. Not everyone in the group is as strong a swimmer as Tammy, but eventually they all agree. Everybody's talked about it,

and I think we even said, you know, you can stay on here if you want, but we're all going to die, so you might as well die trying. In the early hours of the morning, they push their cold, stiffened bodies away from the pontoon. tune and set off paddling in the direction of land. For Tammy, a steely determination takes hold. All I have to do is swim, and that was in my mind. Not that I was tired, not that I was cold, not that I was thirsty or how long it would

take, nothing. I said, all I have to do is stroke, keep stroking and just swim. At first, they swim close together. But gradually, gaps open up between them. Tammy leads the way. Daniel, who is also a strong swimmer, brings up the rear, just behind Christy and Randy. They continue like this for a while, battling through the waves in a ragged procession. But after an hour or so, it becomes clear that Christy is struggling.

Not wanting to get too far ahead of the others, Tammy stops and turns. And that's when their very worst fears are realized. I heard Christy screaming, again, yelling this time to her boyfriend Randy to come help her. And, you know, she was screaming. And that's when I saw just like in the movie Jaws. She went straight up in the air, straight back down. And then she went up again. I was close enough to her or I felt like I saw the blood leave her body because she just, she was like a ghost.

It was like white. She was white all of a sudden. And then she went face down in the water. Tommy Stairs. horrified. She screams at the boys to stay away from the blood. I could see the water change color. So I just kept yelling that, that, you know, don't go. Don't go as a shark. Ignoring Tammy's frantic appeals, Daniel and Randy swim over to Christy. Tammy can only watch in dismay. Soon, more sharks will surely be attracted to the area.

In this most appalling of situations, Tammy's survival instinct. take over. I just said, I can't. This is not how I'm going to go. There wasn't a lot of thought or should I, could I? It was just, yeah, you saw that and you're like, there's no way. I was like, I can't. I can't do anything for them.

You know, I have to swim and try and get help. And I just turn around and I just kept swimming. Tammy doesn't look back. The shock of what she's just witnessed is overwhelming. But she plows on through the waves, her body in full survival mode. After a while, she flips around and starts doing backstroke. keeping her gaze fixed resolutely on the blue sky above. I didn't see anybody coming behind me.

I was like, they're all going to die. There's all that blood in the water. I just crazy. And then it was like right after that, you know, within 10 minutes or so, I don't know that I felt a bump on my leg. Tammy's blood runs cold. Something big has just brushed up against her leg, a glancing, deliberate bump.

She looks down. to the murk of the water, heart crashing in her chest. So I looked down and it was a shark, but it would come at me like swimming sideways, right beside me and it just kind of hit me on my thigh, not with his nose or anything more like his body. Some sharks, Great Whites, for instance, will typically nudge their prey before striking, a behavior known as a bump and bite attack. Tammy watches this dark shape lurking beneath the waves.

apparently sizing her up. She turns back to the sky with a shudder. And yet, somehow, rather than panicking, Tammy manages to stay composed. It was like a nanosecond that it was just in my head. It was the most horrible death ever. I'm not going to die this way. I'm just going to put myself in mind of a fish

like I belong in the ocean. Just keep stroking steady. Don't be scared. She focuses on keeping her movements relaxed and fluid. Soon enough, her heart. heart rate slows. Her breathing returns to normal. She keeps swimming, and still the shark bite doesn't come. Minutes pass, then an hour. Tammy's strokes are as consistent as clockwork, sweeping her arms up over her shoulders and gently kicking her feet, smooth and steady. It was probably, I don't know,

maybe three hours in a swim, somewhere around there, where when I turned around, I could see the shoreline. I mean, I was still far, far, but I could finally see it, so I knew, oh my God, you know, I'm going the right way. Tammy is still probably four or five miles from shore, an immense distance to cover after so many hours without food or water. But she doesn't waver. Three hours becomes four, then five, then six. Waves lap insistently against her face. the saltwater stinging her eyes.

Her sun scorched skin reddens and cracks open in her blistered lips. She swims through great swarms of jellyfish, their poisonous tentacles, leaving raised welts along her face and arms. And still, she plows on, undeterred. Eventually, exhaustion starts to loosen Tammy's grasp on reality. At one stage, the image of a pier

materializes in the sky above her. So real-looking, it feels like she could spring from the ocean and step right onto it. But in my head, I knew, okay, well, if I get on that pier, I know that's not really real. So if I get on that pier, it means I'm probably going to die. So I just, I said, now you've got to keep swimming. It was weird.

It was like, it was almost like giving up. If I touched the pier or trying to get to the pier, I knew I was going to drown. I wasn't ready. I still had energy. and we just kept swimming some more. Hear that? It's your money calling.

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Jane Austen's stories returns. This time, Dame Julie Andrews will be reading another beloved classic, Emma. Step into the village of Highbury, home to the handsome and clever Emma Woodhouse. Witness the delicate art of matchmaking, where appearances can deceive, and true affections are not always easily guessed. On short history of, we're herring around the world with the groundbreaking journalist Nellie Bly and grappling with the surreal with Salvador Dali. On real survival stories, we're in the shark-filled waters off the coast of Florida

and trundling down the Birdsville track deep in the Australian bush. And in Sherlock Holmes short stories, Holmes investigates the disappearance of a missing star rugby player in The Adventure of the Missing Three Quarter. Get all of these shows and more early and ad-free on Noiser Plus. It's early afternoon. Nine hours since she started swimming, Tammy is fading. Her body, pushed to its limits, is on the brink. Then, hearing waves crash somewhere behind her, she turns.

There, maybe a mile away, partially concealed behind a wall of rolling breakers, is the beach. The very beach they set out from yesterday morning. Incredibly, Tammy has swum dew west in a perfectly straight line, And now she is close enough to make out the raised wooden lifeguard tower. With all the energy she can muster, Tammy starts yelling and whistling. But the lifeguard is out of earshot. She's going to have to swim a little further in. However, when she reaches the place where the waves are breaking offshore,

she meets resistance, a progress halts. She has swum directly into the path of a powerful rip current. She battles against the surge of water. water flowing against her. She kicks and flails her arms, but she can't overcome the force of the undertone. She is being pushed back out to sea. Yet once again, when presented with a horrifying scenario, Tammy manages to remain pragmatic. I remember to go sideways. If you can cut through sideways and a rip current, it's a lot easier just go north or whichever way it's going and then you'll eventually cut across. And so that's what I did and rolled over the search.

I remember when I rolled over the surf, that's when he saw me. As Tammy tumbles through the white water, she catches sight of the lifeguard, jumping off his chair and running down the beach. When he's close enough, the lifeguard throws a plastic lifeboy. Tammy reaches out with exhausted arms and grabs it. Moments later, she's staggering onto the beach. The lifeguard starts berating her, demanding to know what she was doing swimming so far out. she could have gotten herself killed. I just looked at them and I said, I just probably swam about six, seven, eight miles. To shore, I said there's a cap-sized catamaran out there

and my friend was attacked by a shark while she was out there. And he just looked at me like I was full of BS. And I said, yeah, you've got to get a helicopter or something because there's two other guys out there and I don't know if they're dead or alive. After being checked over at the Coast Guard station, an ambulance arrived to take Tammy to hospital, where she is treated for hypothermia and deities.

dehydration. Hours later, while lying in a hospital ward, a police officer comes to speak to her about what happened. Tammy shares her story, then asks if anyone else has been found. The officer tells her that two others were picked up, about five miles north from where Tammy reached shore. Both were young men. Once Tammy's fluids have been restored and her internal body temperature has been stabilized, she asks the doctors if she can be discharged. They wanted me to stay overnight because I was really dehydrated. But I just said, I don't feel bad. I just want to go home. Over the course of the next few days, as the press picks up the story, Tammy is interviewed by a slew of reporters. But she assumes they're only interested in the shark attack and not her personal experience.

I just thought they wanted to know what happened to Christy. And so I didn't even feel like I was part of the accident. And I didn't want sympathy or anything, but I just took myself out of it. It's like, yeah, it's terrible, you know, and for Christy, but I think because I repeated that story, it didn't traumatize me as much. A kind of dissonance emerges

between Tammy's experience in the ocean and the way that the story is being told and perceived. Is she a survivor or a spectator? A victim or a witness? That disconnect is only emphasized further when she goes to visit Randy in hospital and here's the story from his perspective of how he and Daniel

swam over to Christy, but ultimately, tragically, couldn't save her. He did get to her, and Daniel came also to her, and he said they tried to grab her, they took her by her chest, neck and tried to swim, but her leg was gone.

The shark had got that, but they did try and swim, they were too far from the boat, and so as they swam, they realized they couldn't do it and had to let her go. A few weeks later, Tammy moves to Atlanta. Arriving in a new city where nobody knows her or her connection to what happened,

the whole thing feels even further removed, like a bad dream. Six months later, Tammy is in a bar chatting with a new co-worker when all of a sudden a strange sensation comes over her. The bartender, a bright-eyed, fair-haired young woman, looks just like Christy. As Tammy falls silent, her colleague asks if she's okay. I was just stunned. So when she looked at me, she said, you look like you saw a ghost. And I, you know, I said I kind of did.

And that's when I started, I said, I guess I'll tell you a story now. I don't usually tell people, but, and then I started in on the story. And it wasn't five minutes into her, not even ten minutes. She knew what the story was and just looked at me and said, oh, my God, you're that girl. And I said, what girl? And she said, you're that girl in a sailboat accident. She said, you're the one that survived. Tammy has still barely shared her side of the story.

The press were more interested in other, more lurid aspects. Tammy didn't even tell her parents about what had happened until her brother insisted. Still, she nods and confirms to her co-worker that, yes, she is that girl. And she said, oh, my God, oh, my God. When this happened, I read about it up here, and I wrote my mom in Naples, and I said, please send me everything you can. I couldn't believe this girl who was survived and all that. And, yeah, that could show me up.

So, yeah, we became good friends. 45 years on, Tammy is recently retired with two grown-up kids. Looking back on what happened in August of 1981, she recalls how the experience cast things in a new light. And despite the trauma she experienced, she says she still believes in embracing all life has to offer. I don't think of it often, but it did solidify at the time my spiritual aspect of how everything's connected and how this universe is just incredible.

When I got out, I actually saw things greener, literally, physically. Things look greener to me, the grass of greener, and everything that's more vivid for me. And I think I probably took the amazement, really. I think that's really what it was. It's like I loved meeting new people, hearing new stories, cultures, all that kind of stuff. It was just like, wow, everybody's got a story. It doesn't matter what it is. And people are interesting.

You got to take chances in life and get out of your comfort zone. And that's why I try and tell people and young people, it's just you got to take chances in life. Next time on real survival stories, we meet 62-year-old amateur mountaineer Dan Winker. In June 2022, Dan is part of a small group taking on the grant teacher. on in Wyoming, when adverse weather conditions forced Dan and his buddy Jim to abandon plans for the summit and head back down the mountain. Having hiked a fair way, the pair decide to slide down a snowy stretch of slope. As Dan skids towards his friend, he loses control and plunges into a deep glacial ravine, carved by a waterfall and known as an ice moat. Plummeting into icy darkness,

survival from here will be miraculous. And when Dan comes to, too and takes in his surroundings. It's clear the fall was just the start. It's pitch black. There's a raging waterfall on the right of me. I can feel an ice wall behind me. This sheer rock wall is in front of me. And as I looked up, I could see a small dot, which is in sunlight.

There is no way of making it out of here. That's next time on Real Survival Stories. Listen today without waiting and without ads by joining Noiserplan. The first ever all-electric 2026 Subaru Trail Seeker is the EV for the trail obsessed with up to 444 kilometers on a full charge and DC fast charging

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This August on the Noiser Podcast Network, Jane Austen's stories returns. This time Dame Julie Andrews will be reading another beloved classic Emma. Step into the village of Highbury, home to the handsome and clever Emma Woodhouse. Witness the delicate art of matchmaking, where appearances can deceive, and true affections are not always easily guessed. On short history of, we're herring around the world with the groundbreaking journalist Nellie Bly and grappling with the surreal with Salvador Dali. On real survival stories,

we're in the shark-filled waters off the coast of Florida and trundling down the Birdsville track deep in the Australian bush. And in Sherlock Holmes short stories, Holmes investigates the disappearance of a missing star rugby player in The Adventure of the Missing Three Quarter. Get all of these shows and more early and ad-free on Noiser Plus.