On a 4,000-mile sailing trip from Tahiti to San Diego, Tami Oldham Ashcraft and her fiancé got caught in a category-four hurricane.
Tami Oldham AshcraftTami Ashcraft and Richard Sharp, just before setting out on their dangerous journey.
The last thing Tami Oldham Ashcraft remembered before being knocked unconscious was hearing her fiancé scream. When she awoke 27 hours later, she was in the cabin of their 44-foot yacht, laying in several feet of water, surrounded by debris.
Her fiancé was gone and her boat was badly damaged, the result of an unexpected category-four hurricane.
For the next 41 days, Tami Ashcraft would be alone, adrift in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, fighting to survive. And survive she did.
But Ashcraft’s survival was no miracle. She had several years of sailing experience and knew how to use the stars to guide herself back to shore. Her story is a masterclass in overcoming the physical and psychological toll of being lost at sea – one that has inspired people across the globe.
The Calm Before The Storm
Tami Oldham AshcraftTami Ashcraft and her fiancé Richard Sharp.
Three weeks before the deadly storm, Ashcraft and her fiancé Richard Sharp set out on what should have been a routine trip. Combined, the two had years of sailing experience and spent much of their time cruising around the South Pacific Islands on Sharp’s 36-foot sailboat.
The ocean was as much their home as the land was, and at times, it felt even more so.
In September 1983, a friend approached the couple and asked if they would deliver a 44-foot yacht, Hazana, from Tahiti to San Diego. Though the trip was over 4,000 miles, and longer than they had ever gone at one time, the couple felt confident in their ability to do it.
At another time, perhaps they could have.
They set off from Papeete Harbor on September 22, believing they were prepared for the long journey ahead of them. They were sadly mistaken.
The Fury Of Hurricane Raymond
On October 12, disaster struck. Hurricane Raymond, a category-four hurricane, surprised the couple by changing course sooner than they expected. They had believed they had a safe margin, but that sudden shift in the storm’s trajectory put them directly in its path – and this proved to be fatal.
As they were already in the path of the storm, the couple attempted to weather it, donning raincoats and boarding up the yacht. When they did, 40-foot waves and 140-mile-per-hour winds descended on the tiny vessel.
Their final moments together were a frantic scramble. But as the wind howled and the yacht was tossed about like a toy, Sharp made the ultimate sacrifice. He insisted that Ashcraft board herself up below deck, while he secured himself in the safety harness. As she closed the door, she heard Sharp shout “oh my god!” before the boat capsized. The force threw Ashcraft against the wall, knocking her unconscious.
NASAAn aerial view of Hurricane Raymond.
When she awoke, she was surrounded by destruction. The 27 hours she was unconscious were a blessing in disguise, shielding her from the initial terror and chaos.
But when she came to, the reality was overwhelming. The main cabin was filling with water, the masts were broken clean off, and the sails were dragging in the water. A deep gash on her forehead was a painful reminder of the violence. The silence was deafening, broken only by the lapping of water inside the boat.
Sharp, however, was gone. The safety harness was dangling in the water, but Ashcraft’s fiancé was nowhere to be found. Ashcraft later said she believed that the force of the wind was just too strong and that he must have been thrown into the sea and pulled beneath the massive swells.
Yet despite the devastation, the ship was still afloat. Tami Ashcraft still had a chance.
A Battle For Survival On The Open Sea
Tami Oldham AshcraftAshcraft in Hawaii after the hurricane.
She didn’t have time to grieve over her presumed-dead fiancé. The yacht was sinking, the sails were shot, and she the gash on her forehead was growing increasingly painful. Upon further investigation, Ashcraft realized that the engine, the navigation system, and the emergency positioning devices were also in disrepair.
Grief had to be suppressed. The immediate threat was the sinking boat. For days, Ashcraft worked tirelessly, pumping water out of the hull by hand, a physically exhausting and seemingly endless task. Her first act of intuition, however, was realizing she had to make Hazana move.
Using a broken pole and a storm jib, Ashcraft fashioned a makeshift sail and managed to pump the water out of the cabin. It wasn’t pretty, but it caught enough wind to give her a semblance of control, allowing her to “ghost” forward.
Her next challenge was navigation. With 1,500 miles of ocean between her and Hilo, Hawaii, she had no electronics. A search of the drier cabin revealed a sextant and a watch, the only tools that had survived, and the ones she would use to navigate to the closest landmass. Using the ancient art of celestial navigation, she would take sightings of the sun during the day and the stars and moon at night.
Though all the odds were against her, Tami Oldham Ashcraft managed to do it.
Relying on her sextant, canned fruit salad and sardines, and the hope that she’d picked currents that would drift her toward Hawaii, Ashcraft spent 41 days pushing herself to survive.
Hawaii News NowThe Hazana at port in Hilo, Hawaii.
The loneliness was the worst part. For 41 days, she spoke to no one – no one who could speak back, at least. Her grief for Richard, which she had kept at bay through sheer necessity, began to surface in the quiet moments. She would talk to him, to the boat, to the sea — anything to break the silence. Her survival instinct, however, focused her mind, forcing her to concentrate on the next task, the next calculation, the next sunrise.
On the 41st day, her ordeal had come to an end.
The crew of a Japanese research vessel spotted the battered, lone yacht drifting erratically just outside the harbor at Hilo. As they approached to bring the vessel in, they were astonished to find a living soul aboard. Ashcraft was safe, but she was emaciated, dehydrated, and in an awful psychological state.
Finding A New Purpose After The Storm
Though her experience was harrowing, and without a doubt a traumatic one, Tami Oldham Ashcraft eventually found solace by writing her story down.
She couldn’t even read for six years afterward due to her head injury, but in the end she managed to put her entire story down on paper for her book Red Sky in Mourning: A True Story of Love, Loss, and Survival at Sea. It was later translated into eight languages, published in fifteen countries, and made into a movie appropriately titled Adrift.
ZUMA Press, Inc./Alamy Stock PhotoTami Oldham Ashcraft at the premiere of Adrift alongside director Baltasar Kormakur and actress Shailene Woodley.
“Definitely the hardest part was dealing with Richard being gone,” Ashcraft told the Chicago Tribune in her first interview about her experience after her book was published. “There were times I didn’t even want to live anymore because I didn’t know how I was going to go on. I was never going to fall in love again.”
“Actually, while I was in the survival mode, the grief was fairly low,” she continued. “It wasn’t as intense as when I got to shore and the survival was over, and I could see people together and everything kept reminding me of him. I just really had a hard time. But that survival instinct [while at sea] just kicked in. It helped me to focus, to keep myself on track.”
Today, Ashcraft lives on San Juan Island off the coast of Washington, where she still sails regularly. Though she still carries the memory of her experience and her fiancé with her every day, she’s gotten married, has two children, and is the picture of happiness. The only sign of her trauma is a tiny sextant pendant, encrusted with a diamond, which she wears every day.
“It reminds me of how I got home,” she said. “It saved my life.”
Next, read about the worst natural disasters of the 21st century. Then, check out these five amazing survival stories.
