Caitlin Van Mol 0:00
This episode contains some salty language, but otherwise no disclaimers. Enjoy.

John 0:07
You know, people say it's in your blood. You know, it's just that whole thing of moving in concert with the wind and the sea, and you know, God's whole universe, and you're just moving through it, and you're not making a sound.

Caitlin Van Mol 0:25
John Silverwood started sailing with a friend in high school. He then spent a few years sailing around the Caribbean professionally before he met his wife, Jean. They had four kids together: Ben, Amelia, Jack, and Camille, but John always had this one big dream to leave their home in California and sail around the world. When did you kind of cook up the idea for a trip like this?

John 0:56
It was a little naive, but I wanted the rest of my family to get the sensation that I had already had, you know, and it showed the magnificence of the world, and I knew that if I didn't take them now, I would never do it.

Caitlin Van Mol 1:14
And how did Gene John's wife feel about the idea of dropping everything?

Jean 1:20
He would talk about it from the day I met him, that he, you know, this was his dream to sail around the world, and since I like to sail, and I had been in the Caribbean sailing, I was like, "Oh, sure, sure, sure, you know, and then over the years, you know, we had kids and stuff, and things were getting pretty chaotic with four children, and I worked with John, so I, what I told him was, okay, we can get the boat, we can go for a year, and we'll go down the Caribbean, because I was, I was familiar with the Caribbean, and to sail from, we actually left from the Long Island Sound, that to me wasn't that daunting, as long as we could stop along the way. So I kind of looked forward to

Caitlin Van Mol 2:00
it. So they bought the Emerald Jane, a 55 foot catamaran with five bedrooms or state rooms, to house the family for their expedition. The

John 2:11
Emerald Jane, first and foremost, is a catamaran, and the great thing about a catamaran is a twin hull boat, you're sailing level and it's not frightening, it's just a lot safer feel to the whole thing.

Caitlin Van Mol 2:28
Have you taken, I mean, I'm assuming you've taken the whole family out on a boat before? Yeah, and they knew how to sail,

John 2:35
they knew how to sail in the sense of, like, you know, that you're on a boat for a couple hours and then you come back to a dock, and you jump off, and it's all

Caitlin Van Mol 2:44
done.

John 2:45
They had no idea what it was going to be like to fall asleep on a boat when it's even tied to a dock, much less go to sleep on a boat when it's bumpy.

Caitlin Van Mol 3:01
The year-long trip in the Caribbean that Gene agreed to turned into a two year sale that would end in Australia,

John 3:10
and you know, Ben was upset, you know, because he was becoming a teenager, and all of a sudden all his friends, he's been robbed of all this, da da right, and he was really, he was really unhappy with the whole situation, and Amelia, Jack, and Camille, none of them were as upset as Ben about being on a boat, not even close,

Jean 3:36
and thank God he came, because he was certainly instrumental in the hole, saving of his dad's life.

Caitlin Van Mol 3:43
This is Live to Tell, the podcast where I talk to some of the bravest people who have been through the most horrifying things and lived to tell the tale. I'm Caitlin Van Mol. Before going to Australia, the Silver Woods were going to stop in Tahiti and meet some friends that were flying out. And june 25 2005 was just like any other night on the boat.

John 4:15
Jean was in our cabin, which is in the stern of the boat, the

Caitlin Van Mol 4:21
stern is the back of the boat. Ben

John 4:23
and Amelia were up in the cockpit. It was just around 7o'clock and that's when the watch changes, meaning Amelia is done and Ben's going to start. Right,

Jean 4:37
we always had somebody on watch, you know, to make sure that there were no ships in the area, or whatever.

John 4:44
I had just gone down from the salon to our cabin, Jean and my cabin,

Jean 4:51
and I was down in the state room, and John just came down to tell me where we were as far as. Getting to our next destination,

John 5:02
and just then you could hear like this kind of like grinding sound.

Jean 5:10
I just heard this really strange scraping sound, and we weren't sure what it was, and I was like, what was that? And then it's like they were sailing again, but then hit again at that moment I wasn't really frightened, but as I'm running up on deck, I just see this huge wall of water coming through Amelia's stateroom, and I mean I didn't know what to do, because you know I thought I was on Titanic or something, I've only seen movies like this where this water just comes in because it was in one hole, so it was down below where there was Ben's room, was up forward, then there was like a galley, a kitchen, and then Amelia's was in the back. So, what happened was, it just, it just cut a huge hole into her room, the water just came flying through, and she wasn't down there, but that was my first thing I saw, and I was like, I was in shock, because I planned everything for this trip. Of course, my children are the most important things, and my, that our safety was the most important thing. So I researched everything. I mean, I thought I had everything possible for every scenario that we would not be in danger,

Caitlin Van Mol 6:21
but she couldn't have prepared for this.

John 6:24
I hear Ben's just yelling, "Ref, we got Reef. And as he's saying it, that grinding sound happens again, only it's more pronounced, and the boat, you can feel the swell, you know, the ocean swell has picked us up and dropped us back down as fast as I can. I'm going up into the cockpit, right, which means I'm in the cockpit in three or four seconds, and I can hear yelling from inside the salon. It's the kids, meaning Jack and Camille, they're completely freaked out, and Amelia is trying to calm them down, and they're, they're Amelia, like she's got Camille, is like literally wrapped around one of her legs. Jack was kind of trying to hold on to Amelia as well. I don't want to die,

Caitlin Van Mol 7:15
but John can't take the time to calm his children. He has to call for help,

John 7:20
I get into the salon, and I've got to take a left to go on the porch side of the boat and down the stairs, because that's where our radio room is, and I need to call for help. I'm trying to use our single sideband radio, right, SSB, which is a long distance radio, 1500 miles is not a problem, so I'm calling out, I'm calling, you know, Mayday, Mayday, Mayday, right, and I can hear these French guys, but it's infuriating because they can't hear me, and I don't know why, and so I'm trying a different frequency and stuff, and Gene,

Jean 8:01
I got the satellite phone, and my hands were shaking so bad that this phone just went into the water, because at this point in time the water's coming up into the main salon, which is higher than the two holes, but it just went in the water because my hands were shaking so hard,

John 8:16
and Ben is up in the, in the salon area, we've got a, it's called a VHF, very high frequency radio is mounted up there, and he is calling out and calling out and calling out, you know, Mayday, Mayday, Mayday, and he's not getting any answer, we're getting nowhere.

Caitlin Van Mol 8:36
So that's three communication devices down,

John 8:39
we're 450 miles from any land, and nobody knows that we're there, right.

Jean 8:44
Our last ability was to take out this emergency beacon.

John 8:50
EPIRB is an acronym, emergency position indicating radio beacon.

Jean 8:55
I saw a TV show, actually I was watching Good Morning America or something, and these two sailors have been rescued because they had just come out with a GPS beacon, so that these beacons, once they went off, which could send a position.

John 9:12
You never think that you're going to have to do that, and from that moment on, that thing is sending a signal out, and that signal is trying to find a satellite that it can relay the message through.

Jean 9:27
We had that, but we didn't know if it was working. It just has a light on it. So, Jack just sat and held that

Caitlin Van Mol 9:35
eight year old. Jack was in charge of holding their only signal, and he took that very seriously. Meanwhile, Ben and John went to pull out the live raft, which was no small task, given how much the boat was moving. The

John 9:50
sea was running 15 to 18 feet. That's the swell. Okay, and what that, what that means if you're sailing out there is you're just. Going up, up, up, down, down, down, down, down, right to the point where you know once you're at sea for like a couple hours, you don't even notice that swell. The problem is this is a reef, the boat's being picked up and slammed back down onto the reef, and that the raft, before we had pulled it, so it's still in the can, that the container, it, the whole raft, which weighs, I don't know, 140 pounds or something, it jumped right off the deck because of the impact of us going up and down,

Caitlin Van Mol 10:37
they managed to inflate the raft and get it into the netting on the front of the boat, you know that netting that you see, like influencers or your rich friends sunbathing on on Instagram, that's the netting that they put it in. So they tie the raft loosely down, and oh, while that was happening,

John 10:56
all the lights on the boat go out because the battery banks are flooded, and there's so everything's shorted out. Everything goes black. It's a new moon, which means there's there's not going to be any moon at all for four or five more hours. It is black, you can't see anything. I go back down, and Ben goes back down, and I'm just telling every.. I'm giving everybody an update on what's going on, and as I'm giving that talk and everything, I realized that we had just very lightly tied that life raft down, and I thought I got to get back back up there. I mean, I'm just trying to calm everybody else down in there, so we get back up there, and we've tied the raft off, and the next thing I know I have this like explosive pain, and I realize my eyes are open, and I'm laying on the deck. There's that first explosion of pain, right? And then the pain comes back, and it's like it's online now, it's not stopping. The

Caitlin Van Mol 12:05
mast of the boat had broken off and fallen right onto John's legs.

Jean 12:11
I'm just watching them, and I'm in the back with Amelia and Camille and Jack, and as he's getting the life raft out, the mast comes down and just like pins him to the deck of the boat, and at that point in time I went into like complete shock, where I just couldn't move, I couldn't feel, I couldn't, I could hear what was going on, but I couldn't see anything, and I couldn't feel anything, and I'm just standing there,

John 12:37
a mast has come down, it broke my leg, and I'm yelling for Ben right away, because I want.. I'm worried about him, so I'm just laying there, and the next thing I know, his face is up above me. I can see that there's blood dropping off his cheeks on either side, right? You know, I'm saying, "Are you okay? And he goes, "Yeah, look, I got nicked, but it's not.. it's just a little bit of blood, Dad. It's no big deal. He says, 'Dad, I'm gonna.. I'm gonna get you out of here. I'll be back, right? And he takes off, and so I'm on the deck alone, and the like.. when these waves break, they come over the boat, and I'm underwater, and I've got you, got to hold your breath, and then you know, because the wave comes up, and then the wave steps back down, so you just have to hold your breath until the wave comes back down, and I want to see, like, how bad is my leg, so the mask is laying across my leg, and I put my hands on the mask, and I pull, and I use that to pull myself up into, like, a sitting position, so I can see over the mask. When I look down, that's when I'm like, huh, the legs gone.

Caitlin Van Mol 13:58
Could you describe his leg when you first saw it, it

Jean 14:02
was below the knee, like halfway between his foot and his knee, and it was hanging by a piece of skin, like the whole thing was cut, was severed, and I don't like blood much, so I mean, I can't, I can't kill it, one

Caitlin Van Mol 14:19
of the spreaders, the things that jut out from the mast that keep ropes from tangling, had fallen right on, or rather I should say right through John's right leg. A

John 14:32
wave or two had hit me while I'm up like that, and then I lose my grip on the mast, and I just fall backwards, and Ben shows up and he had some pretty thick, like heavy duty line, so he runs the rope around the bottom of my leg, and he's brought two big screwdrivers, and so the line goes around my leg, and then he puts a screwdriver between my leg and the line under. Knee, and then on top, you know, he ties the rope together, and he slides the screwdriver through the knot, and then takes the screwdriver and just keeps twisting it until he can't make it go anymore, and that's my first tourniquet. The thing with Ben, it's incredible. I mean, Ben is like a genius. I mean, look at the shit hit the fan. It's his father. It's pitch black, and somehow he just says, "Dad, I'll be right back. And two or three minutes later, he comes back. I mean, clearly I would not be having this interview with you were it not for him doing that, because when you whack the femoral artery, that's a big one, that it's a lot of blood.

Caitlin Van Mol 15:49
We'll be right back, but also, if you don't like ads, you can get ad-free episodes for just $2 a month at patreon.com/live to tell Jean was not handling this well.

John 16:05
Ben comes back up, and the first thing he says to me is, he said, 'Den, look, I told Mom she can't come anywhere new near you, because it's because you know it's going to freak her out, right? Five minutes after that, who do you think shows up, my wife and I can't tell you what Jean was doing for the next like couple hours, except to say that she lost it, right? Like she was, she was talking to me while I'm laying on the deck about going shopping, she was just in a state of shock, you know, and I don't, I don't blame her.

Jean 16:46
I was just, I was getting ready to die, I was getting ready for my family to die, and I was trying to make light of the whole thing, like, well, I'll see my mom, I'll see my dad, I'll see my grandparents. We'll all go together, you know. Because this is what's going to happen. What else can happen out here? And I'm not helping, I'm not doing anything, because I'm still in this state of shock. I just hear this voice in my head, like, get off of your.. I'm gonna say, go for

Caitlin Van Mol 17:20
it,

Jean 17:21
get off your ass and go help your family, you know. And I just.. I wasn't even praying at that point, but I still to this day think that that was God, you know, that was God telling me, "Stop this and you're not going to die. Get just get back there and start helping. And at that moment, I just autopilot.

Caitlin Van Mol 17:40
So Gene snapped out of it, and everyone was gathering supplies, and while they did that, John just has to hang out under the mast alone with his thoughts.

John 17:53
Ben says, "Dad, I'll be back, and he's going down because he's trying to calm everybody down, and everybody wants to know how I am, and so there's, there's like a period of time where I'm, I'm up there alone. I don't know how long it was. I like, I know I'm gonna, I'm gonna die. There's no doubt, and like, when you, when you think you know you're gonna die, and then, and then you're in a lot of pain anyway, and you start thinking, well, is that like it's a good trade off, maybe like I die, and then the pain goes away, and then the other part of your brain says, well, you have a choice, are you going to fight or are you going to just let go and die, and I'm in a lot of pain mentally too, because of the enormity of this, and it's like I don't want my wife and kids to die.

Caitlin Van Mol 18:55
So John started to pray,

John 18:59
and I wanted God to deliver them from death. I wanted them to survive, and then I'd always throw a word in for myself, and I go, by the way, God, I don't want to die, right?

Caitlin Van Mol 19:10
If you, if you have time,

John 19:12
yeah, that initiation of me praying became like my mantra, even though I'm mixing Christianity with Buddhism, or whatever, but that was my safe place, and I would just put myself in prayer, you know. 8o'clock comes and goes, 9o'clock comes and goes. The boat got picked up and thrown back down, like maybe like quarter to 10, and one of the bowels, like, completely broke off, and within the space of, like, two or three more waves, the other part of the bow broke off with the life raft in the netting. Oh, leave, they go there on the reef, but they're not connected to the boat anymore. The

Jean 20:00
boat is just breaking up. There's like metal coming. We're in the cockpit, and I just remember there's this one time where there's this metal flying. It was from like a sun cover, like a Bimini, over the cockpit, and it almost like impaled Camille. And she was only five years old at the time, and she's like, "Mommy, if we die, can I go to heaven with you? And I was just like, oh my god, what my kids went through and how they handled it was, was truly, truly amazing. But it was my son, actually, who said, you know, at some point in time we're going to have to get off this boat, and we'll have maybe have to leave dad here

Caitlin Van Mol 20:43
while Gene and Ben were faced with an impossible choice, John had a revelation,

John 20:49
maybe at like 10 o'clock or something, where I was like I'm going to live, it drives me crazy, you know, when people say, oh, God told me this or God told me that, oh well, God said this, and that's why I'm being very cautious about this. God didn't speak to me. I never heard, like, John, I am God, right? Yeah,

Caitlin Van Mol 21:13
it's Morgan Freeman's voice of a sudden, yeah.

John 21:17
But I will say this, it was put into me, right, like God put into me that I had two things to do, and that's it. I have to hear myself breathe and listen for my heartbeat. Those are that's my job. You can't sleep because you have to hear your heartbeat.

Caitlin Van Mol 21:44
Focusing on your breath and heartbeat is easier said than done when you're still stuck under an 80 foot mast. The

John 21:52
mast is like a, it's 80 feet long, it weighs 2500 pounds. The mast will lift up with the wave, and then it comes down, so every time it comes up, it comes back down on my leg again, right? Yeah, because it kind of like just re-reawakens the pain, like when you're trying to get it to stay in one place,

Caitlin Van Mol 22:17
but the mast didn't lift high enough for John to get free, Gene and Ben worked for three hours trying to get John out from under the mast to no avail. Did I mean, was there any part of you that was like, I might have to abandon my husband?

Jean 22:36
Oh yeah, I would say, in the beginning, though, you know, we were just trying to get him out, so we, Ben, and I, the thing that got him out from underneath the masses, we finally decided I was going to lay on the deck and push with my legs, because I already knew I have, like, no upper body strength, I have a lot more lower body strength, because I'm a runner, and Ben was pulling, and at that moment, the wave hit the boat. It was just like a perfect, perfect storm, but the wave hit the boat. It lifted the boat up enough that the mast lifted up as we were doing that, and we pulled him free.

Caitlin Van Mol 23:16
They had gotten over, or out from under, a major hurdle, but even with John Free, they are still in the middle of the ocean with a life raft stuck between the two broken hulls, and no idea if help is on the way.

John 23:33
Ben's always like close to me now, in sitting down, and he's just there for me, and so I come to a point where I confess all my sins with an open mouth. I don't confess them inside, I say it laying on the deck of the boat, everything, and I know Ben's there, and I don't care, I just do it, and Ben is crying now.

Caitlin Van Mol 23:57
Yeah,

John 23:59
and he's, he stops crying, and then he actually does a confession himself. Yeah,

Caitlin Van Mol 24:08
well, how did it feel to hear him confessing?

John 24:12
It just felt to me like this was all written in a book, like it's intentional on the part of something bigger than we are. I say, Ben, get the kids up here. And so I've got Amelia, and I got Camille, and I got Jack, and they're right there, you know, they're on their knees, and I'm on my back, and the waves are coming in. But I say to them, listen, you know Ben knows what he's doing, and you've got to listen to what he's saying, and don't worry about me if I take a nap, because everything's going to work out just fine. So, I'll see you guys later, because Ben's got to have you in a safe place.

Caitlin Van Mol 24:57
The boat is breaking up so much that staying on. It would be extremely dangerous for the rest of the family, but where the hell are they going to go?

John 25:07
Because we're on a reef and you can't launch a life raft on a reef. The reef is so, so sharp, and you could shave with a piece of that stuff, that's how sharp it is. So, I mean, a life raft on a life wrapped on a reef, is it's going to be cut and go in no time at all. Right, Ben thinks that he sees somewhere out in front of the boat that's that's staying dry, so he says, "Look, Mom, I'm going in, I'm going in to check that out, and he jumps off the boat into the water, and then kind of paddle swims in, and when he comes back out, he says, Mom, you know, he's like his hands come back up on the deck, pulls himself back up there, and he says, Mom, look, it's dry, it's safe there, we all got to get out of here, right? And I'm taking Camille in now. Jean's like, "No, you're not taking her in there. And just Ben just goes, "No, Mom, we gotta go, and he jumps over. Camille jumps overboard, and so he Ben takes Camille in, puts her on the reef, comes back out, gets Jack. Jack goes in, Amelia goes in, and then my wife says, 'Don't worry, we're gonna get through this, and she leaves. I'm on the boat alone, and that was like that was hard for me.

Caitlin Van Mol 26:32
Yeah,

John 26:33
because I was alone, and the boat is just being picked up and thrown down, and and I'm by myself, and I'm in a shitload of pain, and this has been hours now. Yeah, that was, that was bad.

Caitlin Van Mol 26:47
Did you feel abandoned

John 26:49
a little bit, but on the other hand, not really, because I know that they are on a safer place than where I am

Caitlin Van Mol 27:01
over on the reef, Jean was helping her kids get settled.

Jean 27:06
There was pieces of the boat, and there were cushions, and there were things that we could actually put on there to sit, but everybody was getting their legs cut up or their feet cut up. We did, we had a basket of shoes, and the kids had put on, like, their flip flops and stuff, and you'd be walking along on it, and then all of a sudden there'd be a big hole, so your leg would go in there with your foot, and then you'd get your leg cut up, so but that didn't even seem that bad at the time.

Caitlin Van Mol 27:34
I guess all things considered, like this is the least of our problems.

Jean 27:40
It's true, it's true, it's so funny

Caitlin Van Mol 27:43
now that her kids were safe, or safe considering Jean's focus returned to saving John,

Jean 27:51
because we didn't know how to get him off the boat. The life raft was actually sandwiched in between the two hulls, even though we had it tied to the deck, it flipped over, and it was in between the two hulls, so it couldn't get the life raft to get him off the boat to get him over to the exposed reef, which was out a bit. Ben and I just sat on the reef, and we're like, well, how are we going to get him off the boat? How are we going to get him off the boat? So, at that point in time, I actually swam out to the boat. It's like you just do these super human things when this kind of stuff happens, you know? Like, there's no way I would ever do that. But I swam out to the boat, and I tried to get the life raft out in between the two hulls, and I mean, I'm under the water, and I'd come up for air and I'd go back under and and finally I was exhausted, so I went back to the reef, sat there with Ben for a while, and then I'm like, I'm going to try again, and I went back out there, and I finally got the life raft free,

John 28:54
they did it right, it took about 40 minutes, 45 minutes, something, but they were able to bring that raft in and get me off the boat, and then they paddled me with the raft into where this, this kind of big coral bed, you know, it was like the size of like a king size mattress, that's where the whole family was, was on that reef, and Amelia brought the raft to, like, this kind of pool that was part of the reef in general, right? So the raft is floating in the water, and Amelia is standing in the water, you know, like the water's up to her waist. The raft is is surrounded by coral reef, right, and she doesn't. You don't want the raft banging into the side. So, from like 330 in the morning until dawn, that was her, that was her job.

Caitlin Van Mol 29:51
So everyone was out of immediate danger. Now they just had to keep John alive until someone could find them.

Jean 30:00
John was freezing, and he's gray, and so we all had to start, like, taking pieces of clothes off, because our clothes are wet. It's just making us more and more cold. We're trying to keep him warm. So I was in at, I was in the life raft, holding him, trying to keep him warm. Camille was on his other side, trying to keep him warm and keep her warm, and Amelia was just standing in the tide pool with like legs cut up, and there's sharks out there, but you don't even think about that when you have somebody dying in a life raft, and I didn't think he was going to make it, like he was gray, he was, he wasn't talking, I guess he was hearing, but he wasn't talking, and in my mind, first of all, I said, How did you let this happen? Like, how did you agree to do this? This is all your fault, you know. Your kids wouldn't be in this position if you didn't agree to do this trip, so there was that guilt thing there, and then it went from the guilt thing to, well, we may have to leave him here, we may have to all go in this life raft and just float around until somebody finds us, or I remember seeing an island like two or three hours ago, maybe we'll end up there, and then we can survive on coconuts, like the stuff that goes through your mind is just crazy. And so, basically, I was planning his death, and that was what we were gonna, we were gonna try to make it afterwards.

Caitlin Van Mol 31:32
We'll be back after this break, but if you don't like breaks, you can get ad-free episodes for just $2 a month at patreon.com/lived to tell the sun. Finally came up. They've been awake all night, and all they can do is keep their eyes peeled for any sign of rescue,

John 32:01
so I'm just looking at, you know, what's becoming blue sky, and you can hear Ben saying, you know, I think there we got a plane up here, and so everybody's attention is up, right, and looking around, and then you can't see anything, and then, like, another 60 seconds goes by, and yeah, bam, sure enough, here comes this jet, and that jet is circling around, circling around, circling around. Everybody's ecstatic, and I'm like, this is great, but it's jets can land on a reef.

Caitlin Van Mol 32:34
So they had a sign of rescue, but signs of rescue only count in horseshoes and hand grenades, or something like that. What they needed was a boat, and luckily the crew of that plane knew exactly where to find the closest one.

John 32:52
And there's an island 17 miles away, like an acre and a half of palm trees, no running water, no electricity, nothing, and that's where this mom and dad, and their 12 or 14 kids, just a shitload of kids, yeah,

Caitlin Van Mol 33:08
a boatload, one might say,

John 33:11
they want them to come out in their fishing boat and rescue us, right, but these people, they've got like a jet flying over, they have no idea, so there's a guy on the jet, and he writes a message, right, and rolls it up and shoves it in a bottle, puts the top on the bottle, and they take that search jet, and they fly low and slow, and drop the bottle in the water, and kids swim, kid swims out, gets the bottle, brings it back in, gives it to his dad. Dad pulls a message out and reads it, and he goes, "Oh, we gotta go. And so three of his sons and him, they jump in the boat, and they arrive out at our place at, like, I think about a quarter to 10 in the morning, and that was a big moment. Once somebody yelled and pointed, everybody could see it, you know. It's, it's an old fishing, like little fishing boat, right? But it's got an outboard, so not only can you see it, you can hear it.

Caitlin Van Mol 34:13
Yeah. How did you feel when you heard that? Did you feel like my life is saved? I'm gonna, I'm definitely gonna live now.

John 34:20
No, honestly. Honestly, because I was so wrapped up in my instruction, hear my heart, hear myself breathe, that I didn't feel emotional about it.

Caitlin Van Mol 34:37
So these silver woods piled into the boat and headed to the island, where a rescue helicopter eventually landed.

Jean 34:46
Then, when the helicopter landed, even though it was, it was hours later, that's when I broke down into tears, and there was a doctor, a diver, the pilot, and the co-pilot, and they gave John all IV. Keys, and he was moaning and groaning, but then they get, and they gave him a shot of morphine, and he actually spoke his first word, and I was like, "Wow, we're going to be okay,

Caitlin Van Mol 35:10
but okay didn't mean the same as before. The helicopter took them to Bora Bora, where they switched aircraft to get to Tahiti and get John to the hospital

John 35:22
when I was in the ambulance with the nurse and with Jean, and the nurse was rambling along in like broken French, and you know, and making a very poor attempt at speaking English, and both Jean and I understood her that my leg needs to get cut off, you know, like way high up, and I just said, "No, you got to save my leg. And last thing I remember was the black shape of the surgeons, you know, because they're like over my head, you know. And I think they're saying in French, you know, count to 10 and have a nice day, or whatever.

Caitlin Van Mol 35:58
They did, in fact, have to amputate his leg above the knee, but when he woke up,

John 36:04
and I say, God works in mysterious ways, is wonders to behold, and I have no effing idea why or how I said that. I had never read that, never. I had no idea. I don't, I to this day, I don't know why I did that,

Caitlin Van Mol 36:23
but then, what was it like realizing that they had amputated your leg?

John 36:28
It didn't bother me at all. I was alive.

Caitlin Van Mol 36:31
Yeah,

John 36:32
I wasn't being pessimistic. I was gonna die. Yeah, and, and, and just the fact that I was alive was overwhelming with happiness to me, and I mean to the point of, like, I didn't think of it like, well, you know, John, it was a high price to pay, but you have your life given to you, none of that. I was just, I'm alive, yeah, and I mean, today, to this day, even as I speak to you, that's where I am. I'm alive

Caitlin Van Mol 37:05
from your perspective. What was it like with the aftercare and the healing and the recuperating?

Jean 37:13
In some ways, that was more difficult than the shipwreck. Sometimes, you know, it's like we came back here and we were all so grateful to be alive, we're all really happy, and you know, we spent two weeks in Tahiti while he was recuperating in the hospital, but then when he came back, he had in-home care for about two weeks, and then when that stopped, there was a lot of issues, because at the time they didn't cover, they didn't cover physical therapy for him, if you can believe that, or a prosthetic, so there was a lot to deal with, with insurance, with four kids making sure they could get wherever they needed to be, and then deal with with the issues that they were going through, and deal with my own issues, and take care of him, so, and we were just trying to, you know, get by. I

Caitlin Van Mol 38:03
mean, you have four kids to drive around, you have your husband to get to place for rehab, and this, that, and the other. Who was helping you? Did you have help?

Jean 38:15
I didn't have help, because my family's all on the East, they're all in New York, on the East Coast. I mean, they would come out every once in a while, but yeah, I didn't really have any help. I didn't mean

Caitlin Van Mol 38:26
that's a lot. It is

Jean 38:28
a lot, so you know it's still manifest today. Sometimes when I think about it, it's.. I didn't realize how much trauma I actually went through, and have I try to push it in the back of my head, so I don't, you know, feel I feel like I'm okay, but there are definitely times where I'm not okay.

Caitlin Van Mol 38:50
What do you do in those times when you're not okay?

Jean 38:52
I, I love being out in nature, I hike a lot, and sometimes I just disappear and go away, like I travel a lot.

Caitlin Van Mol 39:04
Yeah, I think that's very valid, like you just need a break.

Jean 39:08
Yeah, yeah. So that's why I think I do. I do travel a lot, like actually I'm so lucky because I leave on Thursday to go with my sister to Africa.

Caitlin Van Mol 39:17
Oh

Jean 39:18
yeah, and a bunch of her, and a bunch of women that we don't even know each other.

Caitlin Van Mol 39:22
When they were back in California, John and Jean knew the whole family would need help processing what happened. When you were in family therapy, you don't have to answer this, because I know therapy, especially, is very personal. But what was the discussion during those sessions?

Jean 39:41
Well, we actually had only a few family therapy sessions, and they were mostly centered around John, because he was the amputee, and he was going through all this stuff, and, and I have to say, the therapists thought that he was the one that he needs to focus. On too, because we were, we were being asked to get out and start speaking and doing this, and he thought that perhaps that was too early for him to do that, but John wanted to do that, and then the kids, you know, they didn't want to have family therapy with, with us, so I did get them to see somebody one on one for a while, and they were all getting a lot of attention, which was good, and especially my son, you know, because he was a boy scout, he was getting, he got the honor medal across palms, so there was a lot of positive energy going towards them, like giving them kudos, you know, for all that they did to help their dad and stuff like that, I think the one that kind of got lost as my second son, Jack, because he was only eight years old when it happened, and he and his dad were super close, you know, where Ben was kind of going off on his own, and so he had a lot of issues that, but, but you know, boys don't want to talk about that stuff sometimes, so I, I think he's the only one it really affected,

Caitlin Van Mol 41:02
and how did that manifest

Jean 41:05
behavior, behavior going forward, like in grade school and middle school and high school. He's better now, but he, I think, he had trouble, trouble focusing and getting with the wrong people, and you know, just misbehaving, but it's he's 30 now, so yeah, but that was difficult for us, because you know you're trying to get one child on the right path, and it's not happening.

Caitlin Van Mol 41:32
Have you talked to Jack about now that he's more mature, he's an adult, about was the shipwreck the source of his problems, or was it other stuff? Like, have you talked to him about that?

Jean 41:46
No, I haven't. That's a good point. I mean, I bought up little scenario things to him, but it would be a good idea for the three of us just to go out and talk about it more. Well, yeah, I'm thinking at his age, maybe he's actually been able to think about it more. No, it's like I said, it took me almost what, 18 years to realize that when we're arguing about something that's so crazy, it's actually a post-traumatic stress, you know. It's never the same. It's been.. it's.. I'll be honest, it's been difficult, but we just try to get through it because he's got chronic pain and he's got, you know, he can't get around the way he used to. We can't do a lot of the things that we used to do together, like we used to love to walk or play tennis or whatever. I had to kind of do those separate, but you just, you know, you just thankful that you have what you have.

John 42:39
I think that it strengthened our marriage because, because we were tested and we didn't break, my life was saved by the combined efforts of number one, that number two was my wife. That sounds really simple. It's like, okay, well, so they saved your life, so then you lived happily ever after, or something, right? That's not true. What is true is that she was patient, and she was always there for me, like on the rehab, and everything else.

Caitlin Van Mol 43:16
A part of surviving for Jean was fulfilling a promise she made on the boat that night,

Jean 43:21
when you know, as I said, we had plenty of time on the deck to think about things, and when I was praying, I said, God, if you can save our family, you know, we're gonna do something really good, like we're gonna, we're gonna give back to others and help them, and you know, I did, when I came back, I started volunteering at the cancer center, and then I also felt like John had gotten another boat, and I said we need to put together a sailing ministry nonprofit where we, we take other people out that are disabled or sick, and you know, show them the beauty of sailing with the Coast Guard around,

Caitlin Van Mol 44:01
and they within a controlled environment,

Jean 44:06
that's how I pretty much found my promise to him, because I made a promise to him, and I had it, you know, we were saved, and it definitely changed our life, as far as our faith that we know that when we need help, there's somebody, there's somebody up there that's going to help us.

John 44:26
I know that, like every one of my kids and my wife, we are bonded together in a very permanent, unbreakable union born of survival, nobody, nobody could break us. That's that's a real thing, because everybody was tested, everybody could have wimped out, and nobody did.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai