Debra Scaling Kiley (0:00)

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Dan Kennedy (1:08)

Welcome to the Moth Podcast. I'm Dan Kennedy and the Moth features true stories told live without notes. All stories from the podcast are taken from our ongoing storytelling series in New York, Los Angeles and from our tour shows across the country. Visit themoth.org this podcast is brought to you by audible.com which is a provider of audiobooks with more than 60,000 downloadable titles across all types of literature, including fiction, nonfiction and periodicals. For listeners of the Moth Podcast, Audible is offering a free audiobook to give you a chance to try out their service. One book to consider is the New York Times bestseller the Checklist Manifesto. How to Get Things Right by Atul Gawande. In a series of riveting stories, the author explains how to trigger immediate improvements in any piece of your life through the surprising power of the ordinary. Checklist the Checklist Manifesto is available free from Audible. To download a free audiobook of your choice, go to audible.comthemost that's audible.comthemost the story you're about to hear by Deborah Scaling Kiley was told live at the Players Club in New York City on July 15, 2009. The theme of the night was Dial M for Moth thriller stories.

Debra Scaling Kiley (2:28)

It had actually been a really great year. I was the first American woman to sail around the world in the Whitbird around the World race. I had taken the first all female maxi boat across the Atlantic from La Rochelle to New Orleans. Everything was great but fall was coming and I was living in a pup tent in Bar Harbor, Maine, with a waitress job at Bubba's with $3.18 in my pocket. And I really wanted to be back on the ocean. So what I did was what any very smart sailor does. I went to the boatyard, put up my little piece of paper on the board, and it said, female crew experienced looking for rides south. Call Debbie at Bubba's. Well, it wasn't long before the phone rang and my boss gave me the message. And that afternoon I went over to the boatyard, to the moorings, to the bar. And I walked in and I immediately recognized this fellow, John Lipoff. He was scraggly, tan, weathered, about 30, typical sailor dude. Had a beer in his hand. He said, hey, come on over here. Want a greenie? I went over and had the greenie with John, and within 30 minutes I had the job. We would set sail very soon after that, but I decided I needed to call my mom and tell her what I was doing for some unbeknownst reason. And she said, debbie, why are you getting on another boat? Why are you running? What are you running from? Come home and get married. I love you, Mom. Bye. Well, yeah, maybe I was running. Marriage was mother's solution to everything. But it was that crazy, nutty childhood of just abuse and neglect and everything. And if I was running, I was enjoying it. So John and I hop on the boat and we start our voyage from Maine to Florida. Here we go. The only thing we have to do is find crew. First stop, Falmouth, Forside Maine. His mother lived there. The only problem was the only crew that we picked up there was his girlfriend Meg, and she didn't sail. So we kept going down the coast. And it was getting later in the year, harder to find crew. There was no crew anywhere. And I was like, we gotta do something. He said, look, you find the crew. So the dubious job of finding crew had now fallen on my shoulders. We had one more stop. Annapolis. Right after the boat show, we stopped in Annapolis and. And the stars must have been shining on me. I get off on the dock and there is one of my dear sailing buddies, Brad Cavanaugh. Big old honker dude, great sailor, responsible. And I'm like, what are you doing here, man? He goes, I'm looking for a ride south. And I go, oh, I got a deal for you. And he said, what about my friend over here, Mark Adams? And this little short blonde hair, icy eyed Brit looks at me and he goes, hey, Brad, got a chick in every Port. And I looked at him and I said, dude, I'm not a chick. And he said, you're all chicks. We were not off to a good start. Well, I took him down to the boat. John fell in love with them, of course. And the next day, all I know is we were headed off to Florida. It was a beautiful day. I mean, glorious. It couldn't have been any better. We had very ugly hangovers. But Meg quickly popped the top on a few greenies and we flipped up the spinnaker and sailed south. It was gorgeous. We set up our watches. Obviously, Brad and I were on a watch together and Mark and John were on a watch together. Meg just sat below and looked pretty. Anyway, for several days we sailed off and everything was beautiful. And then the weather started to change a little bit. And the second day in, we were supposed to make a stop at Beaufort to go to a party. And I went down. I said, what time are we going to arrive in Beaufort? And he goes, oh, a little problem. I forgot the charts. You forgot the charts? You never forget the navigational charts. I don't know. The most amateur sailor in the world. Okay, I'm not going to say anything. I'm just going to sail the boat. Then the weather started building and it just kept getting a little bit worse and a little bit worse. And by the evening of the third day, we were in a gale. The waves were about 35ft. The wind was blowing about 50 knots. I walk up from my watch and I look around and I'm mortified at the. Just the damage on the deck. Mark is howling, drunk with a beer in his hand. Meg has fallen across the cabin, hurt her back. The dire dow dinghy that's on steel davits has been ripped off the stern of the boat. And I'm like, get him off. Just get him off the helm. So we get him off the helm and we put him in the bunk and I go down to the engine room and there's John trying to fix the engine. I said, what's wrong? And the impeller's broken. We've got to have it to charge the battery. Batteries. I'm like. And you're drinking? And he's like, just go up on deck. So I went up on deck and Brad and I stood our watch through the night. It was almost impossible. So when our watch was finally over, we were so excited. And I went down below and both Mark and John and Meg, they were all passed out and they were unawakeable. It was like the only thing we can Do Brad, is to finish the night out. So through the night, Brad and I kept watch. The storm built and it built and it was no. You could feel the waves were building. It was like 45ft because they were just crashing into the boat. And then the winds were gusting and, you know, it was way over 50. It was like 70, gusting, maybe 80 or 90. And by the next morning, when John finally popped his head through the companionway, he looked around at the site and the chaos, and you could tell he was really distraught. He said, I'm calling the Coast Guard. I go, dude, you never call the Coast Guard. I'd sailed around in conditions like this. This is what sailors do. We sail through storms. He says, I'm calling the Coast Guard. A few minutes later, he pops his head up and he says, a plane's gonna fly over and check our position. And I'm like, okay. So an hour went by, and of course you hear it, the fuselage rattling, the twin props, and it just sort of descended out of the sky like this great humming cross. It did a little banking turn, and then it flew back into the storm. And it was like, oh, my God, we're saved. And maybe this call was not such a bad call. Meg has fallen and is hurt. The boat is definitely unsalable, and I'm not sure that John knows where the hell we are. So Brad and I decide, you know what? We're being saved. The Coast Guard's coming. Let's go down below and take a nap because we are exhausted. We've been on deck for 13 hours. We go down below and. And we go to sleep. Debbie, Debbie, get out of your bunk right now. Come on, we gotta go, we gotta go, we gotta go. I jump out of my bunk and I land knee deep in water. I make it through the companionway and I look on the port side and the port entire window in the main salon is broken in. Water's coming in. On the right is John making a mayday call. Mayday, mayday, mayday. The Coast Guard. We're sunk. We're sinking. We're sunk. I make it up the gangway, go up. I look out, expecting to see the Coast Guard or the ships that were sent to standby, and there's nothing except for this incredibly ferocious, tumultuous, looming, unforecast hurricane. It all became a slow motion nightmare. I watched Mark as he went for the canister for the life raft where all of our survival equipment was held. He was supposed to tie it to the stern, but he didn't. And I watched the life raft in the canister inflate, and it just blew across the tops of the waves and it was gone, dragging him behind it like a water skier who had fallen. Then I watched as Brad unleashed or unlashed the rubber Zodiac dinghy from the deck. He threw it overboard, took it down to the leeward side of the boat. I waited for the waves to come in. I jumped in, swam out to it. And on the way out to it, with all of this chaos going on, I hear this screaming. And it's Meg, the skipper's girlfriend. And somehow or another, she has gotten herself caught in the main mast rigging. It is slashing her all the way to the bone through the muscle all over her body. I looked at Brad and I said, I have got to go back. I've got to get her. He said, if you're not careful, you will be sucked down with that boat. I swam back and I looked at Meg and I said, meg, look at me. See these eyes? You are going to swim out with me, and you're gonna do it when I tell you, or I'm going to leave you here. We waited for the next wave, and we took off. And we managed to make it to the rubber Zodiac dinghy alive. When I got there, we were all there. And we all looked around at each other and Mark hollered, we're all gonna fucking die out here. Little did he know he was partly right. And then we watched as the last two feet of this trash man sink below the surface of the ocean. Now it was just me and my new dysfunctional family in this rubber Zodiac dinghy that was 11ft long, 5ft wide, and filled with air. Well, the good news is that when we were in the water, we noticed it was warm. We were in the Gulf Stream, luckily, which in late October is 76 degrees as compared to the rest of the Atlantic Ocean, which is 55. We would have died in the first hour. So we were unable to keep the dinghy upright because the storm and the waves kept throwing us out of it. So we decided we would turn it over, hold on and breathe in the space between the surface of the ocean and the bottom of the Zodiac dinghy. We did this for 18 hours through the night while we treaded water. The next morning, we tried to flip the Zodiac and did. John was having heart palpitations. First John went in, then Brad. And then we lifted Meg into the boat. And the gravity and the gravity of her wounds was unbelievable. Mark and I decided to just hang on a little Bit longer to the sides because the warmth of the water was so incredible. The air temperature was like 40. And against wet bodies, the wind chill was like 20. And this seductive, amniotic, wombish feeling of the Gulf Stream was just too great. And then all of a sudden I hear this. Quit kicking me. I'm like, I'm not kicking you. And this guy's like driving me nuts. So I look in the water and I see these torpedo shaped bodies and they're like slithering. And all of a sudden one goes bam. And I'm like, sharks. And I mean, Mark and I were in that boat, like, okay, so I've been really worried about hypothermia because I'm kind of one of those survivalist chicks now. I'm not so much worried about fucking hypothermia. I'm worried about the sharks. But I do realize we can't survive unless we're warm. And the lucky thing is, is that I had this companion and friend, Brad. And we got this little board out of the bow of the Zodiac dinghy and we came up with. I looked over my shoulder and knowing that we were in the Gulf Stream, I knew that this yellowy green weed floated around. Sargasso weed. And I said, you know what? Insulation for one day. The second day. But the entire day Brad fended off the sharks while I gathered mountains of sargasso weed to keep us warm. The miraculous thing is that in this out of control situation, in this little bubble of sargasso weed lives this entire ecosystem totally in control of itself, with little clams, fish, and little crabs. But the problem is you can't eat any of it. It's too salty. And the little crabs, they begin to bite at your skin and they cause salt water sores. By the end of the second day, we were exhausted. And into the third day, it. Everyone was very dehydrated, very cold, our teeth were chattering. The mumbo jumbo and the madness of the rescue talk, it was crazy. A seagull landed on the side of the boat and pecked Meg in the face. I'm like, this is like Alfred Hitchcock. Okay, it's worse. And so I'm like, look, Brad, let's just put our head under this little rubber part of the boat and lay there for a minute and I think we fell asleep. And the next thing I know, I hear this. And Brad goes, debbie, what's that? I go, I don't know. He goes, I think they're drinking salt water. And we poked our heads out and it was as if we had caught the cat with the canary. Their eyes were big, and they said, but we're thirsty. And I'm like, everyone knows you don't drink salt water. It brings on madness. You will go crazy. It causes global malfunctions in the body. Your kidneys fail. The neurons in your brain burst. You go nuts. It was only a matter of time. We slept through the night. And I was right. The next morning, John was talking about going to Falmouth Foreside, where he saw the truck parked over there. He literally lowered himself over the boat and started to swim out. We watched as his head rose and fell with the swells. And then we heard the scream. It was blood curdling. The sharks had gotten John, Meg and I cried. We laid in the bottom of the Zodiac for a little bit, and I think we fell asleep. And then a little bit later, I hear this noise, commotion going on, and I hear this. Let's just have sex. Come on. I'm sick of. And I said, brad, Brad, wake up. You've got to intervene. And he gets between Meg and Mark, and he says, dude, gotta stop this shit. You know, you've lost it. And he goes, you know what? I'm so sick of y'all. Your shit. I'm sick of everything going on. I'm going back to fucking 711 for beer and cigarettes. And he lowers himself over the side. All right, now, by now, Brad and I are, like, freaking out because Mark's been talking about pulling these rubber patches off the Zodiac dinghy. And so we're looking frantically for him everywhere, but no Mark. And then out of nowhere, something just pummels this Zodiac dinghy and sends us spinning around. And then it hits the bow, and the bow flies up, and this frenzy of sharks breaks out all around us. And we realized that the sharks were eating Mark underneath the rubber Zodiac dinghy. It went on for an entire night, way into the night. We said the Lord's Prayer, and we knew as long as we could remember each and every word that we might be able to walk that fine, tight wire of sanity. And somewhere in the evening, the frenzy kind of stopped. But the sharks just began to slither underneath the boat, kind of patrolling for the next meal. You could feel their sandpaper skin, and they'd come under again. And then Meg started acting really odd. She started waving her hands in the air like a Spanish dancer. And then she started speaking in some kind of really strange language. And I'd heard it before. I was raised in the Bible Belt of Texas, and so I knew it was something. And then all of a sudden I went, whoa, she's speaking in tongues. And I remembered it because of the great revivals in the tents and it was just like, oh my God. But I understood what she was saying. She said, I am taking three souls and leaving you to tell. And it was like, whoa. A few minutes later, a few hours later, Meg died in my arms. The next day off of Cape Hatteras, Brad and I were rescued about 290 miles off by a Russian freighter. I don't know about all the searching and the running I did, but it somehow put me on a trajectory to this exact destination, these exact coordinates in the Atlantic Ocean. All I can tell you now is that I learned the greatest lesson of a lifetime. I learned that I was strong enough to survive. I was given a job by God, and my job is to keep the miracle of survival alive. And I want to thank you all for being here tonight and offering me the opportunity to tell you my story.