Real Survival Stories - Shipwrecked on a Reef: A Mother’s Courage

Episode Date: May 15, 2024

Jean Silverwood and her family are in the middle of a once-in-a-lifetime voyage around the world. As they sail serenely through the remote waters of French Polynesia, it seems the issues that once dogged them have been left behind. But when a freak night-time collision maroons them on a coral reef, they will have to overcome their greatest challenge yet. As the boat disintegrates, Jean must risk her own life to keep all her family alive… A Noiser production, written by Joe Viner. For ad-free listening, bonus material and early access to new episodes, join Noiser+. Click the Noiser+ banner to get started. Or, if you’re on Spotify or Android, 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

You're a podcast listener, and this is a podcast ad heard only in Canada. Reach great Canadian listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libsyn Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements or run a pre-produced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target audience with Libsyn Ads. Email bob at libsyn.com to learn more. That's b-o-B at L-I-B-S-Y-N dot com. It's 11 p.m. on June the 25th, 2005. French Polynesia. Moonlight illuminates the rough seas of the South Pacific.

Large, dark waves roll, then split, breaking suddenly against a shallow coral reef. On the reef, amid the churning waters, a boat lies wrecked. A 55-foot catamaran, the Emerald Jane, is dragged relentlessly over the razor-sharp coral, slowly being reduced to a heap of splintered wood. On board is 48-year-old Jean Silverwood, her husband John, and their four children.

They're a family in dire straits. The front of the boat was just breaking up all over the place, and pieces of metal are flying. The windows came in. The one wave hit the whole forward windows that are supposed to be like hurricane proof. And they just exploded. So we knew that the boat wasn't going to be there much longer. Jean clambers across the creaking deck.

Spray lashing her face. the wind tearing at her clothes. But right now, they can't go anywhere. Right now, abandoning ship would also mean abandoning her husband. She turns back to John, who lies on the deck, trapped beneath the fallen main mast. Crushed by 1,000 kilograms of metal and fiberglass, blood pouring from an open wound just below his knee. We had tried almost everything to get the mast off of John. We had tried for hours in every possible way. I mean, pulling, pushing, doing whatever, but it was just way too heavy.

Waves continue to crash over them, surging across the deck. Jean glances at the faces of her frightened children, huddled together, seawater lapping around their ankles. To save her children, will Jean be forced to leave her husband behind? She must make a decision when time is running out. 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. People suddenly

forced to fight for their lives. In this episode, we meet Jean Silverwood. In 2005, Jean, her husband John, and their four children are in the middle of a round-the-world sailing trip when a freak collision leaves them marooned on a remote coral reef. Jean will find herself scrambling to keep her boat and her family from being ripped apart at the seams. He's bleeding. I mean, we don't know what's going inside his open wound from the reef, from the water, you know. So I really just didn't think he was going to make it. Pitted against the unrelenting power of the ocean, they will have to draw strength from one another

and in the process, discover a unity they never knew they had. I'm John Hopkins from Noisa. This is Real Survival Stories. It's February 2004. The Emerald Jane glides serenely across the calm, sparkling waters of the Caribbean Sea. A bright green mensel ripples in the breeze. Warm sunshine reflects off the 55-foot catamaran's gleaming white bow. Up in the cockpit, a golden hair billowing behind her, is 47-year-old Jean Silverwood. Her husband, John, stands at the helm. Below them, lounging on the netting spread between the catamaran's twin hulls, are their four children, 14-year-old Ben, 12-year-old Amelia, and the two little ones, Jack and

Camille, aged six and three. The Silverwoods are five months into the adventure of a lifetime. When I first met John, before we even got married, he would talk about going and sailing around the world and, you know, that that was like his goal. And at first I just listened to him and said, okay, yeah, that sounds great. But as time went by and we had four kids and we were living in San Diego, you know, just driving them around from place to place and all the stress that went along with raising kids, I kind of thought about it. I said, well,

it's not such a bad idea because it was always in his mind that we would do it. As busy property developers in Southern California, they juggle the competing demands of growing a business and raising a family. It's left little time for exotic, far-flung adventures. But one day, in 2003, Jean finally decides it's time to make their dream a reality.

I think I was just trying to get through every day with four kids and working. You know, I pretty much worked full time and I did want to get away to where I could spend some time with my children and actually enjoy them and get to know them, I guess was my mantra just to get there, to go be able to do that, because you can't do it here. So in September 2003, the Silverwoods leave their busy lives behind and set sail from Long Island, New York, heading south for the equator. But their grand adventure doesn't get off to the best start. It's not long before the hardships of life at sea begin setting in.

Everybody was always yelling at each other, especially when you're docking the boat. And the captain can be a little aggressive and mean, you know, like yelling at the kids. And they would say to me, if dad likes sailing so much, why is he always angry? Because you'd be like, you'd be pulling up to the dock and he'd be screaming on how to dock the boat, you know, but it took a while for us to really mesh together as a family. After a few months with their bronzed skin and sun bleached hair, the Silverwoods certainly look like a healthy, happy family. But below deck, frictions continue to grow. The kids are at each other's throats.

The two eldest, Ben and Amelia, complain constantly, wishing they were back home with their friends. It turns out, parenting at sea is even harder than on land. Surrounded by unhappy teenagers and wailing infants, alongside the physical rigors of sailing, Jean and John are struggling to cope. In fact, the disappointment of seeing his dream sour has driven John to a dark place, a place Jean hoped they'd seen the last of. My husband, he suffered from, well, he was an alcoholic off and on throughout our marriage.

He did stop for about 10 years. And then, so, I mean, that was the reason that we went. You know, he didn't drink anymore. But then when we were in the Caribbean, he picked it up again. And that was, you know, extremely stressful for me because I'm like, what's going on? In mid-February 2004, things come to a head. Jean calls a family meeting, hoping to openly address the problems her husband is having. If they can't get through these choppy waters, they'll have to pack the whole thing

in. I actually made him tell the kids, you know, we sat down once in the cockpit and he told the kids his story about how he used to drink and then he had to stop drinking and, you know, or our family wouldn't have been together. So it just goes to show that there's ups and downs in marriages, and if you can get through the parts that are difficult, it can get better. And gradually, it does get better. John stays sober, and as the weeks at sea roll on, the atmosphere improves. The family is becoming a team, and everyone is happier for it. Well, almost everyone. One of the real challenges for us was Ben because Ben did not want to be on the boat.

Ben didn't want to be with his family. We had had a few periods on the boat when we were sailing maybe three or four days where he would lock himself in the room and just go, I'm going to say ballistic. You know, it's like he had damaged the walls and the door at one point, you know, because he just, he couldn't take it anymore. He didn't want to be with his family anymore. Despite teenager Ben's angry outbursts, the Emerald Jane continues her voyage south. In the summer of 2004, the family pass through the Panama Canal and out into the Pacific Ocean. By Christmas, the silverwoods have reached the white sand atolls

and turquoise lagoons of French Polynesia, a collection of over 100 islands stretching across 2,000 kilometers in the Southern Pacific. Dotted throughout the blue waters, there are tufts of dense green jungle, palm-fringed beaches, and vibrant coral reefs. Basking in these stunning environs, The family spirits are high. But cyclone season here is extremely dangerous. So to avoid the worst of it, the family docks the boat and briefly heads home to California. Much to Ben's delight. After this restorative shore leave, everyone returns to French Polynesia in fine spirits, ready to continue their adventure on the Emerald Jane. Even Ben now seems excited to be sailing again.

Things are finally clicking into place. We became very close as a family. I mean, we knew each other very well and we actually learned to live together in a small space harmoniously. After, you know, being on the boat for a while, you just had to. You couldn't just have these big outbursts anymore. And you just kind of learned to live with everybody's different quirks. So it was good in that respect. It should be smooth sailing from here on out for the Silverwoods. In fact, as they continue across the Pacific, the family is about to face the greatest challenge of their lives. From the director of The Greatest Showman

comes the most original musical ever. I want to prove I can make it. Prove to who? Everyone. So, the story starts. Better Man, now playing in select theaters. Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings.

Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. It's almost sunset on Tuesday, June the 25th. About 350 miles southwest of Tahiti. A stiff breeze ripples the surface of the Pacific. In the twilight, silhouetted against the sky, the Emerald Jane quietly motors along. The Silverwoods resumed their voyage three days ago. The next phase is a two-week-long journey to Fiji.

It's a straightforward route through open water, aided by a warm southerly tailwind. The only landmass to avoid is a tiny atoll 70 miles south. John drops the mainsail and sets the autopilot. Below deck, it's another ordinary evening on board the catamaran. We made dinner and it was starting to get dark. So we just decided to go along with the jib and the engine. We put the engine on and I was getting ready to go to bed. The kids just finished up a movie. Ben was on watch because John came down to like go over a schedule with me because we were hoping we would get to Fiji in time. At around 7 p.m. Jean is sitting up in bed peering at timetables on her laptop screen.

John stands in the doorway of their room. All is quiet save for the soft whirring of the autopilot. Jean and John are discussing their schedule when there is an almighty sound, a strange, high-pitched screeching. All of a sudden, we heard the scraping underneath the boat. And I was like, what's that? And we thought it was a log or something. And so John ran up to the cockpit

and all of a sudden the boat just came to a grinding halt. In an instant, the screech becomes deafening, like hundreds of nails being dragged down a chalkboard. And then the Emerald Jane comes to a violent, juddering stop. But the noise continues, accompanied now by the sound of thunderous waves breaking across the boat. Everything shudders and shakes. And then, above deck, Ben's voice rings out,

a single word screamed at the top of his lungs. Reef. Jean leaps out of bed and rushes to John, who's now in the main salon. Amelia's there too with young Jack and Camille, open-mouthed with fear and confusion. While John tries to reassure the kids, Jean grabs a flashlight. She bolts up through the hatch to the main deck and peers overboard into the dark sea. In the torchlight, she can see red fingers of coral poking through the churning surf. How has this happened? Where did the reef come from?

There's no time to ask questions. They need to get free of it immediately. Jean can hear John now behind her in the cockpit, throttling the engine, trying to reverse. But it's no use. They're stuck. Jean runs back into the salon to check on the kids. But as she does, a torrent of seawater erupts through the doors of the cabins. This water just came through. It just looked like something out of Titanic. You know, I was in shock. I just stood there. I couldn't believe that this was happening.

Jean is rooted to the spot as water surges through the boat. Its wooden partitions start to buckle, rupturing under the pressure of each heaving wave. Their home is disintegrating. It's coming apart beneath their feet, and it is happening fast. Suddenly John appears by Jean's side. Get to the radios. Jean, John and Ben all rush to the map room where the communications equipment is kept.

John yells Mayday into the long-distance transceiver, the SSB. Ben frantically repeats their coordinates into the short-range VHF radio. And Jean lunges for the satellite phone. But the handset slips through her trembling fingers and falls into the water, which is now rising rapidly around her feet. When she picks it up, a message flashes on screen. No signal.

My husband is standing down by the SSB radio with his legs in the water, like up to maybe his knees. And he's, all you can hear is these French voices and they're talking, but you can't get anything through where they can actually hear you. And we were out of range with the VHF radio because we were about 350 miles southwest of Tahiti when this happened. So there was nobody else around that would get any kind of call from the VHF. So we didn't think anybody was hearing us. John repeats their coordinates, his voice cracking with desperation. But only static comes back.

Suddenly, Gene remembers the Emergency Radio Beacon, or EPIRB, a handheld device that automatically transmits the vessel's GPS locations to satellites monitored by the Coast Guard. Jean rips the EPIRB from the wall and activates it. It might be their only hope. Mere minutes have passed since the Emerald Jane hit the reef, but already she is beyond saving. The lower decks are almost underwater. The lights flicker and fizz. Having failed to establish contact with anyone via radio, the Silverwoods now know they've only got one option. Abandon ship. They would ideally launch the fiberglass dinghy, but it's gone, crushed to smithereens between the stern and the coral.

That leaves them with the inflatable life raft. We just started to go to plan two, which was John went back up on the bow of the boat where we keep the life raft and Ben followed him. And they cut the jib sail down because the jib was still up. And they pulled out the life raft. While Jean, Amelia and the two little ones fill carrier bags with tins of food and bottled water, John and Ben inflate the life raft. It's a last resort. With the jagged reef below, the inflatable raft is certainly not the life raft. It's a last resort.

With the jagged reef below, the inflatable raft is certainly not the safest option. But they have no choice. John and Ben secure the life raft at the front of the deck of the boat, preparing it for the family's escape. Meanwhile, Jean and the other three kids make their way above deck, huddling together. The violent waves continue. There is a sudden bang, followed by a crackle of sparks. Then, the lights go out. The Silverwoods are plunged into darkness.

Aside from the frail beams of their torches, the only other source of light is that of the blinking red epurb which young Jack has been entrusted to hold. He grips it tightly in his small, shaking hands. Jean squints through the darkness. She can no longer see the damage being done. She can hear it. Each wave is followed by an explosion of splintering wood and the clatter of fallen rigging. And then Jean feels the boat lifting, flexing beneath their feet, folding inwards from bow to stern.

The Emerald Jane is collapsing in on itself the waves in the south pacific are just so big and you know it's like people break their necks surfing in tahiti and and all this stuff because they're the heaviest waves in the world so as these waves are coming over you can hear them you can hear them like go out and then you can hear them just coming and coming. Amid the relentless roaring waves and chaos of the boat's destruction, there is suddenly an even more terrifying sound. Jean can just about make it out.

A sharp crack. Followed by a horrible scream of pain. It's just after 9pm. Jean stands clutching onto Amelia, Jack and Camille at the rear of the wrecked Emerald Jane. Ben suddenly appears out of the darkness, his face streaked with blood.

With an unnerving calm, he says, Dad's hurt. Jean's stomach lurches. Leaving Amelia with the little ones, she follows Ben to the foredeck, where John is lying on his back. She realizes that the last crack she heard was the Emerald Jane's mast coming down, all 80 feet and two and 2,500 pounds of it. Where John was standing just happens to be exactly where it comes down, so it pins him to the deck of the boat. And as it pins him to the deck of the boat, the spreader, which is like a knife-like blade on the mast,

it just cut his leg off below the knee. It was just hanging from like a little tendon. You could see underneath the mast. It just cut his leg off below the knee. It was just hanging from a little tendon. You could see underneath the mast, and he's pinned there. As waves continue to break over their heads, Jean kneels by her husband's side, blood mingling with the swirling brine. The metal spreader has cut right through the bone of his lower left leg, nearly severing it. I am just, I'm in shock. I'm like, I am in shock. I am frozen.

I'm standing there. I don't even think about my kids. I don't even, I can't think about myself because I don't even feel myself. I just, I feel this body. It's like a feeling that, well, I've never felt it before or I've never felt it since then. Slowly, as if in a dream, she turns and walks to the edge of the deck. I am preparing myself to die. I'm preparing for my family to die. I'm preparing, you know, it's not going to be that bad. We're all going to just, you know, I'll see my parents or I'll see my mom.

I'll see my grandparents. I'll see, you know, people in my lives that have passed away and we'll all die together. So I'm trying to make it like a good thing. The good thing about us going to die together. But as I was doing that, I hear this voice in my head because I'm just in this despair place. And it just says, what are you doing? Get off of your butt and go help. It was like, all of a sudden I went from this place of despair into like autopilot, like, okay, all right, I'm going, I'm going back to help. Jean snaps out of her trance. Her family need her. She spins around and races back to where Ben is stooped over his dad. Incredibly, amid the frenzy, he's managed to construct a tourniquet out of an old length of rope. When it really matters, Ben is stepping up. But even partially staunched,

the blood continues to gush from John's leg. He's trapped under the immense weight of the mast, and the Emerald Jane, sooner or later, is going under. Getting him out is going to take superhuman effort. As John struggles to stay conscious, he asks Ben to fetch his siblings. He needs a reason to fight. And he has the best reason in the world right there. He's told Ben to bring the kids over to him because he had two little voices in his ear. One side was saying, you're in a lot of pain. Just let go.

Just go and you'll be in a much better place. And then he had the other side of the other voice telling him to hang on, to hear his kids. All his kids were hanging on and working and that you need to hang on as well. Jean kisses John's forehead. She too begs him to keep fighting then she ushers camille jack and amelia into the life raft which is still lashed to the deck beside john once they're all inside jean tells her children to pray for their father jean and ben turn back to john into the one-ton mast pinning him down. When the mast was on top of John,

we thought that he wasn't going to survive. I think we thought at that point in time that we may survive, but we didn't think he was going to survive. And he became our focus to have him survive or do what we could to have him survive. They push, they shove, they heave. The masts simply won't budge.

All the while, the waves keep coming, a constant rolling bombardment, each one nearly drowning John where he lies. Jean is losing hope until she and Ben finally notice something. Every time a wave hits, the mast lifts slightly, almost imperceptibly. Maybe if they can time it right, they could use the force of the waves to help shift the mast. They begin waiting for each wave to hit, before pushing with all their might.

Again and again they try. Minutes grinding to hours. John continues to lose blood, slipping in and out of consciousness. They just need one monster wave. Then Jean hears it. A deep rumbling approaching in the darkness. And at that very moment, there was a giant black wave. We call it, it was a black wave because you couldn't see it. You could just hear it coming but that wave hit the boat so hard that

it actually turned the hull bow and the mast jackknifed up at the same time that my legs were pushing and he was pulling and that was enough to pull John out from underneath the mast The same ocean that has destroyed their boat

and placed them in terrible peril has now helped to free John Along with his family, it's rescued him from certain death It felt great that we had gotten that mast off of his leg because we could go on to the next step and we didn't have to worry about him drowning anymore So when we got that mast off of his leg because we could go on to the next step and we didn't have to worry about him drowning anymore. So when we got that mast off of him and Ben could even look at his leg better, we had to figure out what to do with him. The wound looks even worse in the open.

John is incoherent, in total shock. Jean and Ben lift him inside the raft, which is still roped down. Inside, Camille, Jack and Amelia wrap their arms around their father, trying to warm him up. But the foredeck feels incredibly unstable, weak, like it could collapse at any moment. Jean makes the decision to move everyone to the rear of the boat. They'll carry John first and then go back and grab the life raft. The whole family gets up and carries John back to the relative safety of the stern. Not a moment too soon. That's when the whole bow of the boat on the starboard side just

jackknifed and the life raft went in between the two hulls and it stuck. So we're stuck on the boat. There's no life raft. In her torchlight, Jean can see the red plastic of the life raft caught under splintered debris at the front of the boat. Surely it's impossible to reach now. Holding her children tight, she glances again out over the reef. A maze of raised coral ledges and sunken tidal pools. A jagged, inhospitable landscape in the middle of the ocean. But it is solid ground, and it might be their only chance for survival. of shows to reach your target audience with Libsyn ads. Email bob at libsyn.com to learn more. That's B-O-B at L-I-B-S-Y-N dot com.

It's 11 p.m. Gene stands on what remains of the Emerald Jane's rear deck. John is laid out beside her, blood seeping through the makeshift tourniquet. The family now has little choice but to relocate to the reef itself. Ben spots a coral shelf raised above the waterline, a platform of approximately ten square feet, about 15 meters away from the boat. It's hardly a safe haven, but it's safer than staying here. Jean remains with John and watches as Ben lifts Camille into his arms and as Amelia puts Jack on her shoulders. Then her four children wade off through waist-deep water into darkness She follows their torches flickering and dancing over the reef

She can track little Jack's position From the blinking red light of the radio beacon still held tightly in his hands Suddenly the lights all come to a stop They must have reached the shelf a short while later ben is back he reassures her that the others are safe enough for now they've set up a little campsite even fishing a few items out of the water some blankets a few tins of food, and remarkably, the box of emergency flares. You know, a lot of the debris from the boat was already there because it had come off the boat.

So there were some cushions and medical supplies. There were tons of things on this ledge already that he could make it comfortable for them to sit there while we get John off the boat. But how do they get John off the Emerald Jane? It's too dangerous to simply carry him. But then Jean has an idea. The life raft. If they can get him onto it, they could drag John out. It won't be comfortable, but it's better than slipping or dropping him.

The only problem is that the life raft is now entangled within the boat's collapsed twin hulls. How long do they have left to act? Hours? Minutes? Jean sends Ben back to the reef to check on the others. Then she climbs down into the water to try to free the raft from the wreckage. The water is just coming. These waves are still breaking on the boat. So the water is coming over my head and I'm underwater trying to get this raft out from in between the two hulls with all my might. Jean pulls and pulls.

Like with a mast, she tries to time her efforts with the waves, drawing on deep reserves of physical and mental strength. At some point, this life raft just flies out from underneath the two hulls because the wave hits it at a certain time. And I mean, I was completely exhausted. I can't even believe that I had the strength to do that because, you know, I was putting my life in jeopardy for sure to get this life raft out. And it was amazing, but it came out. With the raft freed, Jean calls for Ben to come back and help her. Ten minutes later, with John safely inside,

they slide the inflatable off the deck and begin dragging it, 50 feet or so, over to the coral ledge. It seems to take an age, but they make it. John appears mostly unaware of what's happening. In some ways, it's a mercy, but it's another sign that he's slipping away. When we got him in the life raft and we were in this tide pool where Amelia's holding on to the life raft and, you know, there's blood in the water and there's sharks in the South Pacific. I didn't even think about that then.

It was like that was all secondary to getting the family to safety at some point and also to try to keep John alive. It is just after midnight. From their encampment on the reef, Jean turns to what remains of the Emerald Jane. They escaped in the nick of time. The last few visible sections of deck crumple with the impact of the latest wave, leaving just a pile of fractured wood and tangled rigging. Jean turns her attention to her two

youngest. Jack sits on the coral ledge. His expression is blank, but the E-Purb is still positioned safely in his lap. Camille has curled up next to her dad. His skin is deathly pale.

I just was looking at him a lot, and I thought to myself, well, you're just going to have to, he's not going to make it. He's not going to make it. And you're going to have to take the kids and we'll all have to go float around this life raft for, I don't know, a day, two days, three days, four days. We can get, you know, we'll finally end up on some random atoll somewhere and we can get some coconuts. This is what's going through my head. And so I went from the point where I just needed to save my husband into saving my family. And my husband wasn't going to be saved.

After a long night, dawn finally breaks. By 6am, the reef has almost fully surfaced, revealing a sprawling landscape of rough red coral. In the weak daylight, Jean can see that this coral reef is in fact part of an atoll, a small, rocky, ring-shaped island circling a wide lagoon. It's the tiny landmass the autopilot was supposed to avoid. Somehow they must have drifted off course. The silverwoods sit in their tide pool at the edge of the lagoon, watching the waves lap over the wreckage of the Emerald Jane.

Jean lies down inside the life raft. John has fallen still now, his breath reduced to a thin rattle. She closes her eyes and rests her head on his shoulder. And then all of a sudden, a noise makes Jean sit up. Spinning around, she sees Ben standing on the coral ledge, holding a lit flare above his head, yelling and waving at the horizon. You've seen something. He spotted a plane coming over the horizon. And because the sun had just come up,

the light is flickering on the wings of the plane. And you can just see like this sparkle up in the air. And he set off a flare to get the attention of the plane. Jean keeps her eyes fixed on the low flying jet, which is getting closer and closer until it soars directly above them. And the plane comes and it goes over us and then it comes back and it goes again. And it's just flying back and forth over us and we don't know what they're doing. We don't know who it is.

And then it would leave and it would leave for 20, 30 minutes and come back again and leave again. Every time the jet passes over them, Jean and the children wave frantically. Has it seen them? It must have seen their flare. But even from its low cruising height, the marooned family must be near invisible. Tiny dots camouflaged in the expanse of coral in the middle of a vast ocean.

But then, on one flyover, the plane drops something. A flare of its own. It spirals down through the sky, landing with a fizzle in the water not far from the reef. They've been spotted. The plane circles overhead one last time before wheeling away and flying off. This time, it doesn't come back, but surely help is on its way. The only question is, will it arrive in time to save John? We spent a lot of time as family praying on that boat because what else do you do?

And it's like, you don't know if you're going to be saved. You don't know if your father, your husband's still going to be alive. You pray, you pray a lot. And I'm pretty sure he answered our prayers. It's 9am on June the 26th. Three hours since the plane dropped the flare. Three long hours of strained eyes studying the horizon,

looking for a boat or an aircraft against the blinding sun and sparkling waves. All the while, John is getting weaker, barely hanging on. And finally, through the haze, a small shape slowly materializes on the water. It's about nine o'clock in the morning and we see this little rickety boat in the you know out in the water coming towards us and at first I thought it was birds so I'm like what is that thing coming towards us and it's this as it gets closer and closer I realize it's a it's a tiny like wooden boat with an outboard like a small little outboard engine and there's three Polynesian men inside. Jean jumps to her feet. It's not exactly an armada here to rescue them, but who cares? Soon the boat is pulled up alongside the reef. How on earth did they find them?

The men don't speak any English, so they can't explain who they are or what has brought them here. But they do seem to know what to do. They manage to load all the Silverwoods into their tiny boat. Jean, Ben, Amelia, Jack, Camille, and John, who's still inside the life raft. And then they glide away across the ocean. About an hour later, we're on this tiny little atoll. I mean, there's nothing there. There's just this Polynesian family.

They had, I think, like eight or ten kids and a mom and dad. And I think there was like a grandparents there. And they have a whole table set up of food for us. They have a hut with like clothes in it for us. And they have like a ham radio, like a bigger radio. Jean turns the ham radio to the emergency frequency. And this time someone answers. And they said, Mrs. Silverwood, I'm so sorry.

It's taking long, but we cannot land a jet on this atoll. And we need to send a helicopter. And the helicopter is getting there, but they have to refuel in Bora Bora because we're pretty far out. Like they can't just send a helicopter from Tahiti. Another hour passes, then another. When they do eventually hear the approaching thrum of rotors, Jean is overcome with emotion. And when I saw that helicopter,

that was like when I finally just, like, I just held, Ben held me and I cried. I didn't cry the whole time, but it was like, wow, you know, I think we're really going to get rescued. It's almost midday by the time the helicopter touches down on the remote atoll. John is barely breathing. The French Navy medics swarm around him and begin emergency care. They tell Gene that he is now stable, but not out of the woods.

He has lost 70% of his blood, and his organs have started shutting down. They're going to fly him to Bora Bora, where a jet will be waiting to transfer him to a hospital in Tahiti. After thanking their mysterious Polynesian rescuers, the Silverwoods are hurried aboard the helicopter. All of us got on there. They gave us headphones. And I just remember seeing the kids smile and it just warmed my heart so much because we knew that we were going to be okay. As John is rushed into emergency care in Tahiti, Jean finally finds out how their elaborate rescue actually unfolded. It almost defies belief. Firstly, it was thanks to the EPIRB, the emergency radio beacon,

that six-year-old Jack had fiercely guarded throughout the whole ordeal. The signal was eventually received by the Coast Guard in California, who alerted the French Navy in Polynesia. They deployed a jet to scour the area and eventually spotted the family on the reef. But unable to land, they had to improvise. They called on a local group of fishermen to help using an ingenious rudimentary technique. So what they did was the pilot from the plane

had an orange Gina bottle and he put a note in it and said, follow me, and they dropped it from the bomb bay onto the atoll. And the guy picked it up and it said, follow me. And they dropped it from the bomb bay onto the atoll. And the guy picked it up and it said, follow me. And then they dropped flares all the way out to where we were so that those Mari people, the Polynesians, could come and pick us up. So we were basically rescued by a message in a bottle.

The Californian Coast Guard, the French Navy, a remote Polynesian family, and an Orangina bottle all had a part to play in the Silverwoods' remarkable rescue. In the weeks following the ordeal, John recovers in Tahiti. His leg has to be amputated. The family eventually returned to California, where John spends a further few weeks in hospital and undergoes another operation. All in all, it's a rocky return to life on land. I got home, and then things were difficult here,

because I had to get all four kids around and get him situated. And he finally came home after about three weeks in the hospital or a month in the hospital. And then we got some in-home care for a while, but it was a difficult time. It was a difficult time. Slowly, the Silverwoods adjust. Their bond strengthened by what they've been through. They still don't know what went wrong in the South Pacific, why they drifted off course. It could be that the autopilot malfunctioned, or perhaps their maps were wrong, or maybe they made a mistake in their own calculations.

In the aftermath, Jean and John take the opportunity to pause and reflect. They decide not to return to real estate development or to life as it was before. I said I wanted to make my life worthwhile and I was talking to God and I was like, well, I was thinking someday John and I are going to have a ministry on our boat. We're going to do something worthwhile. So we started a nonprofit called God Swell and we have another catamaran, believe it or not. And we take out disabled people. We take out the military. We take out cancer patients, little Christian organizations. So that's how we feel like we're coming through with one of our promises anyway.

Jean and John will go on to write a book about their experience in the Pacific. If sharing their story brings comfort to just one person in despair, it makes it all worthwhile. We love to travel and we love to tell our story when we're traveling. It's like people are like, wow, that gives me like a lot of hope, you know? So I think that's just how we're dealing with it. We know we're going to be together forever. We have ups and downs, but we have something that we feel is an amazing story to tell. I feel what it enabled us to survive was really the love that we had. Like our family

had become so close and we were so in sync that we were able to have the faith that we knew we were going to survive and that we would do anything to help each other survive. Next time on Real Survival Stories We meet Nigel Vardy and Steve Ball Friends who journey into the wilds of Alaska To tackle North America's highest mountain Blindsided by a howling tempest, they'll find themselves trapped at 20,000 feet. As frostbite sets in, it will seem that their fate is sealed. Acts of incredible self-sacrifice, ingenious communication techniques, and unexpected

twists will all play a part in the men's story. And none of them will emerge from the ordeal unscathed. That's next time on Real Survival Stories. Listen today without waiting a week by subscribing to Noisa Plus.