At 6 AM on June 4, 1989, a wave the skipper estimated at sixty feet flipped the trimaran Rose-Noëlle upside down off New Zealand’s East Cape, trapping four men — a self-taught sailor sleeping aboard everything he owned, a builder on his first trip abroad, a young outdoorsman, and a cook who had never sailed — in an air pocket the width of a 54-inch mattress. Their distress beacon blinked for nine days into an empty sky, the search concentrated hundreds of miles away, and New Zealand’s Water Safety Council listed all four as drowned. For 119 days they rationed salvaged soft drink and slowly ripening kiwifruit, rigged a rainwater catchment, and speared fish drawn to the barnacle reef their own wreck was becoming, while unusual winds carried them in a wide loop back toward home. Then they washed ashore on Great Barrier Island, cleaned themselves up, and walked into a country whose investigators suspected a drug run. The evidence that finally backed up their story may be the strangest witness in survival history.

Time Stamps: 

00:00 Podcast Intro
00:30 Calm Before Capsize
02:20 Meet The Crew
07:19 Storm Decisions
10:08 Rogue Wave Hits
12:34 Life Inside Hull
13:55 Beacon Hope Fades
16:37 Rescue System Failure
18:19 Water Food Survival
21:33 Tension And Psychology
24:22 Drift Back To Land
27:19 Suspicion And Proof
33:04 Aftermath And Legacy
35:47 Closing Credits

References: 

  1. Nalepka, J., and Hellriegel, R., “South Pacific Adventure Turns Into a Nightmare”
  2. United Press International, “Castaway skipper dismisses skeptics,” October 3, 1989.
  3. United Press International, “Investigators question sailors’ account of shipwreck,” October 3, 1989. 
  4. Phare, J., “Lost at sea: The Rose-Noelle story,” NZ Herald / Herald on Sunday (20th-anniversary feature, 2009; republished 2020). 
  5. Glennie, J., with Phare, J., The Spirit of Rose-Noëlle: 119 Days Adrift, a Survival Story (Viking/Penguin NZ, 1990; US edition Fawcett Crest, 1992). 
  6. Nalepka, J., with Callahan, S., Capsized: The True Story of Four Men Adrift for 119 Days (HarperCollins, 1993; revised edition 2013). 
  7. Glennie, J., “119 days lost at sea,” Yachting & Boating World (ybw.com), 2015 
  8. “The Rose Noelle inquiry,” Te Ara — The Encyclopedia of New Zealand (video clip)
  9. Ministry of Transport (NZ), Marine Transport Division, Preliminary Inquiry into the Loss of the Trimaran Rose-Noëlle, November 1989 — 
  10. “1989 — key events,” NZHistory (Ministry for Culture and Heritage) 
  11. “The Rose Noelle: 25 years on, a wife’s true story,” New Zealand Woman’s Weekly (via Now To Love), 2014 
  12. Back From the Dead: The Saga of the Rose-Noëlle, dir. Mark Beesley, TVNZ, 1996 
  13. Wikipedia, “Rose-Noëlle” 



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