OT-The amazing human will to survive.

[Chin Diesel]

The Boston Herald article adds in details that weren't available for the original article.

My initial suspicions about the story being made up seem valid. It was a 31ft boat, not a 36ft boat. lol. Completely incredible will to survive. As I and others have pointed out, you're dealing with tenths of one percent of people who could do this if they were preparing to do it.

As expected, not just hypothermia, but also jelly fish stings, dehydration and rhabdomyolyis (muscle fiber break down). Seeing the shark is strictly a psychological mindf--k that he has to overcome. Sharks are all over the water, but seeing one is a very strong visual that confirms everything you know. You just have to roll the dice and realize there isn't any way to defend yourself.

 

[noeynox]

The Boston Herald article adds in details that weren't available for the original article.

My initial suspicions about the story being made up seem valid. It was a 31ft boat, not a 36ft boat. lol. Completely incredible will to survive. As I and others have pointed out, you're dealing with tenths of one percent of people who could do this if they were preparing to do it.

As expected, not just hypothermia, but also jelly fish stings, dehydration and rhabdomyolyis (muscle fiber break down). Seeing the shark is strictly a psychological mindf--k that he has to overcome. Sharks are all over the water, but seeing one is a very strong visual that confirms everything you know. You just have to roll the dice and realize there isn't any way to defend yourself.

Well, if nothing else, Konrad is going to get PAID off the movie.

 

[Chin Diesel]

Well, if nothing else, Konrad is going to get PAID off the movie.

No kidding.

And just to keep the record straight, I turned down the role to play Konrad.

 

[Carl Spackler]

I just read sun-sentinel piece on this. He's a lucky m-fer and he knows it.


I's an inspirational story, and yet a weird story about boating safety due to the PFD thing. You would hope that if he did have a PFD, that it would have been brightly colored and be a beacon that the passing by boat, or the USCG chopper passing by, would have seen in the water and he would have been picked up well before he made it to shore. Because wearing one, he's just much more likely to float and not use energy, than to constantly swim - and if he doesn't get picked up, hypothermia would win. Lesson there - is don't go boating alone. He gets tossed by a wave while trying to real in a fish, and he's got a buddy on board - it's drinking story at the bar when you get back to dock.

Believe it or not, a nine mile swim in waters warm enough not to kill you for 16 hours, is much more of a mental endurance test of human will to survive - as the OP notes, more than anything else. Sure it's going to be a mountain of a physical task, but doing an aerobic, energy burning slow stroke in calm waters isn't much different than burning the energy of walking very long distances non-stop with a heavy pack on. The difference is that if you stop walking, you just fall down on the ground and can still breathe. You don't have the option of stopping swimming until you can stand. Much easier to give up hoofing it long distances on land with a heavy load, than it is to give up when you're in water - two totally different outcomes. Sharks? If you worry about sharks, you're wasting your time. Konrad learned that quick.

The guy had beacons to follow, he was smart enough to follow the afternoon sun west until it set over the water, and then says he was able to see pinpoints of light on shore as darkness fell. He was clearly mentally strong enough and motivated enough to keep going through the physical problems and was lucky enough to have land in sight when darkness fell. He was lucky that the waters were calm, beyond warm. A storm or squall blows through, and uh-oh. He has a cloudy night with no stars to navigate, and no sight of land? So many variables.

One lucky dude.

 

[Excalibur]

Believe it or not, a nine mile swim in waters warm enough not to kill you for 16 hours, is much more of a mental endurance test of human will to survive - as the OP notes, more than anything else. Sure it's going to be a mountain of a physical task, but doing an aerobic, energy burning slow stroke in calm waters isn't much different than burning the energy of walking very long distances non-stop with a heavy pack on. The difference is that if you stop walking, you just fall down on the ground and can still breathe. You don't have the option of stopping swimming until you can stand. Much easier to give up hoofing it long distances on land with a heavy load, than it is to give up when you're in water - two totally different outcomes. Sharks? If you worry about sharks, you're wasting your time. Konrad learned that quick.

It takes an incredible amount of mental toughness to do what he did, even if you're trained to be comfortable in the water. The only way to survive is do exactly what you describe . . . a slow, steady stroke towards whatever beacon you can recognize, turning on your back when you get tired. Most people, even those trained to swim long distances, would panic in his circumstances. I've done up to two miles in salt water with no wetsuit, and if I fell off a boat that far away from shore, I would likely freak &$k out and have no chance.

 

[Carl Spackler]

It's a magnificent story of what human mental will power can drive the human body to accomplish. He also had a lot of things out of his control going his way to make the entire event possible, and if it's colder waters he's a dead man.

I really believe that being out that far on a trip like that alone, isn't really that dangerous if you're in a high traffic area, and in constant communications and have some experience and knowledge under your belt. It's like flying solo in a plane. Sooner or later, you been driving a boat long enough, you're going to do it alone. He had a course plotted and destination that was known to others and an ETA.

His mistake that he lived to talk about was to decide to go fishing alone, apparently for something big enough to pull him off a rocking boat, and doing it without a PFD and without telling anybody. No way to know for sure, but if he's careful enough to have a PFD on while fishing alone, he's probably smart enough and careful enough, to check in with somebody and tell him he's fishing alone, and have radio check points on course. So when he goes in the drink, it's not a long time before somebody reports him missing and last contact location, and then he gets picked up and nobody ever hears about it.

I don't recall the specifics of the story, but I recall some other NFL players getting lost at sea not too long ago on a fishing trip gone wrong. Rogue wave or something flipped the boat. The guy that lived is the one that kept his head together and stayed hanging on to whatever was still floating from the hull of the boat, the others cracked and were lost at sea. Colder waters I think, when that happened, in cold water without proper gear, the only chance you have is to keep as much as your body out of the water as you can.

Oh well, nice story, and lucky it was warm and calm South Florida waters.

 

[Fishy]

It's an impressive feat, but....

As a UConn alum, I've never been dumb enough to fall out of a moving boat.