Episodi

  • Two Words, One Raft: The Signal That Stopped the Sea

    Two Words, One Raft: The Signal That Stopped the Sea
    Oct 15 2026
    Two Words, One Raft: The Signal That Stopped the Sea

    An orange life raft was spotted at 9:44 AM in the Gulf of Mexico after four days and seventeen hours with no voice from the Delia Rose - and a single two-word transmission, "We're rolling," came through a marine radio at 11:47 on March fourth before static swallowed it. How did a faint EPIRB pulse, a nineteen-mile gear drift, and those two words combine to put four people into nine-foot seas - and why did searchers fly past the raft for days?

    In this episode, we follow the sequence of decisions, equipment quirks, and navigation shifts that framed the Delia Rose disappearance and the search that found an orange raft and a figure signaling with a mirror. What do the radio log, the float plan, and a stapled note saying "We're rolling" tell us about what happened and what was missed?

    Person: Erin Dalton
    Age: 44
    Vessel: Delia Rose (48-foot steel-hulled shrimper)
    Event: Radio transmission "We're rolling" logged at 11:47 on March 4
    Distance: Gear had moved vessel 19 miles east-northeast of filed float plan

    - A search aircraft spotted an orange six-person life raft at 9:44 AM on a Tuesday.
    - The last recorded voice was two words, "We're rolling," logged at 11:47 on March 4 before static.
    - The Delia Rose cleared Sabine Pass at 6:18 AM on March 2 and by March 3 had drifted 19 miles E-NE of its filed position.
    - An EPIRB activated four minutes after the radio call, giving coordinates 6.3 miles E-NE of the float plan position, but the signal was weak and brief.
    - Seas had built to nine feet with a confused cross-swell when Dennis Hoag reported intermittent bilge pump issues and a slow seam leak on March 3.

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    © 2026 OBOMEDIA. All rights reserved.
    This episode and its content (audio, text, and related materials) are the exclusive property of OBOMEDIA and are protected by applicable copyright laws. Reproduction, distribution, editing, or commercial use, in whole or in part, without prior written permission from OBOMEDIA is prohibited. For permissions, licensing, and business inquiries: business@obomedia.com.
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    18 min
  • The Watch on the Upside-Down Hull: 94 Hours, One Text, No GPS

    The Watch on the Upside-Down Hull: 94 Hours, One Text, No GPS
    Oct 14 2026
    The Watch on the Upside-Down Hull: 94 Hours, One Text, No GPS

    A running Seiko zip-tied to a cleat kept perfect time on an upside-down hull after forty-knot gusts and four days at sea - and the only sign anyone had was a single, ordinary text sent 94 hours earlier. How did a 28-year-old marine mechanic end up under a capsized 32-foot boat with eleven gallons of fuel, two granola bars left, and no one tracking his altered route?

    In this episode, you will hear the sequence of decisions, the equipment on board, and the timeline from departure to discovery, and follow the unanswered question that drove the search: could a single text change everything when a float plan drifts off course?

    Person: Ryan O'Brien
    Age: 28
    Vessel: Maren D., 32-foot hull
    Fuel: 11 gallons of diesel
    Last confirmed time on hull watch: 8:21 AM (photographed by Deputy Dennis Vail)

    - Ryan departed Wickfield Marina predawn on Thursday, February 9, with a float plan to Beaufort and expected arrival Friday.
    - At 11:47 AM the same day, Ryan texted Scott Bauer that he had reached Harker's Island Cut and might stay for the night.
    - The dry bag on Ryan contained a foil blanket, a handheld VHF radio, 0.5 liters of water, and four granola bars; he ate two.
    - The hull inverted in gusts above 40 knots and breaking seas somewhere northeast of the cape during Thursday night.
    - Deputy Dennis Vail photographed the running Seiko on the forward cleat reading 8:21 AM when the boat was found in the cattails four days after departure.

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    © 2026 OBOMEDIA. All rights reserved.
    This episode and its content (audio, text, and related materials) are the exclusive property of OBOMEDIA and are protected by applicable copyright laws. Reproduction, distribution, editing, or commercial use, in whole or in part, without prior written permission from OBOMEDIA is prohibited. For permissions, licensing, and business inquiries: business@obomedia.com.
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    17 min
  • Miles Out: How a Hairline Crack Turned Into Twelve Days Lost at Sea

    Miles Out: How a Hairline Crack Turned Into Twelve Days Lost at Sea
    Oct 13 2026
    Miles Out: How a Hairline Crack Turned Into Twelve Days Lost at Sea

    She was 106 miles from land at 2:00 a.m. when a hairline crack nobody could see let a 38-foot mast fall in under four seconds - leaving one sailor adrift with no radio and a six-inch hull breach. How did a single invisible failure and a routine habit about a notebook set twelve days of searches, missed signals, and cascading breakdowns into motion?

    In this episode, we tell the chronological account of what happened on Patricia Barnes’s voyage from Kemah toward Key West, the immediate mechanical failures she faced, and the communication plan that went silent - what went wrong, and why the question of where she was remained unanswered.

    Person: Patricia Barnes
    Vessel: 1987 cutter-rigged fiberglass sloop, 38 feet on deck
    Date: December 30, 2018 at 2:00 a.m.
    Location: approximately 106 miles from land, south of Galveston / 62 nautical miles SSW of Galveston (last known transmission)
    Event: mast fell after upper swage crack; satellite communicator lost overboard

    - Patricia spent four years refitting the boat and paid $60,000 for it at a marina in Kemah, Texas.
    - She was 54 years old and kept a weekly routine of writing for forty minutes at Bev’s Table diner and leaving a $6 tip.
    - On December 29 she texted her position as 62 nautical miles south-southwest of Galveston; that was her final transmission.
    - The mast fell to port in less than four seconds after the upper swage on the forestay cracked through.
    - After forty-five minutes cutting rigging free, she found the propeller shaft fouled and the engine turned over but would not drive the boat.

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    © 2026 OBOMEDIA. All rights reserved.
    This episode and its content (audio, text, and related materials) are the exclusive property of OBOMEDIA and are protected by applicable copyright laws. Reproduction, distribution, editing, or commercial use, in whole or in part, without prior written permission from OBOMEDIA is prohibited. For permissions, licensing, and business inquiries: business@obomedia.com.
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    20 min
  • Alone Against the Current: How Marcia Survived the Nora Jeanwreck

    Alone Against the Current: How Marcia Survived the Nora Jeanwreck
    Oct 12 2026
    Alone Against the Current: How Marcia Survived the Nora Jeanwreck

    Cold, uncharted danger lurked where charts said nothing - a near-surface rock and an invisible current turned a routine December cargo run into a fight for survival. A forty-horsepower outboard was found standing upright in four inches of water with a painted orange chevron; what did one 22-year-old woman do alone, with a broken wrist and a half-empty thermos, that saved her life?

    In this episode, you will hear the sequence of events from departure to rescue, the precise observations in Marcia Simpson’s waterproof log, and the physical evidence recovered by beachcombers and the Coast Guard that shaped the investigation. How did training, quick observation, and one unmarked current decide who lived?

    Date: December 19, 2009
    Person: Marcia Simpson
    Person: Don Tessier
    Person: Phil Horner
    Location: southwest of Cape Bendel

    - At 9:47 AM on December 19, 2009, Kent Andrews found a 40-horsepower outboard motor standing upright in four inches of water on a sandbar 11 miles from the nearest dock.
    - The engine cowling bore an orange stenciled chevron and an intact serial number when recovered and placed in a Coast Guard evidence depot in Petersburg the same afternoon.
    - Marcia Simpson last recorded departure aboard the Nora Jeanwreck at 7:30 AM on December 16 and logged environmental conditions and engine behavior throughout the morning.
    - The Nora Jeanwreck struck an uncharted, near-surface rock at approximately 9:45 AM, producing a sudden stop and breaching the bow below the waterline.
    - Phil Horner entered the water at 10:55 AM after the vessel was compromised and Marcia noted in her 9:50 AM entry: "Tessier cannot correct," referencing the vessel’s inability to steer against a southwest-setting current.

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    © 2026 OBOMEDIA. All rights reserved.
    This episode and its content (audio, text, and related materials) are the exclusive property of OBOMEDIA and are protected by applicable copyright laws. Reproduction, distribution, editing, or commercial use, in whole or in part, without prior written permission from OBOMEDIA is prohibited. For permissions, licensing, and business inquiries: business@obomedia.com.
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    19 min
  • Two Feet from Rescue: 11 Days Adrift After a Ship's Tiny Failures

    Two Feet from Rescue: 11 Days Adrift After a Ship's Tiny Failures
    Oct 11 2026
    Two Feet from Rescue: 11 Days Adrift After a Ship's Tiny Failures

    At two nineteen on November 6, 2017, a sixty-two-foot motorsailer slipped beneath the Gulf and three people spent eleven days adrift with a fourteen-dollar watch still ticking and flares locked fourteen feet away. Precision failures - a two-inch unrepaired weld, VHF batteries twenty-two months old, and two feet of missing mooring line - turned small oversights into a life-or-death drift; how did three professionals survive so long and still go unseen?

    In this episode, we tell the sequence of events from departure to rescue, describe the equipment and maintenance gaps aboard the Cora Bess, and follow Sharon Novak’s daily log that kept them oriented; what choices and oversights stretched those crucial two feet into an eleven-day ordeal?

    Person: Sharon Novak
    Person: Owen Prieto
    Person: James Tully
    Date: November 6, 2017
    Vessel: Cora Bess

    - The Cora Bess sank at 2:19 AM, leaving three people in the water with roughly four minutes to abandon ship.
    - The flare cabinet was stored fourteen feet from the lifeboat and not in the position required by the vessel's safety plan.
    - VHF radio batteries had gone twenty-two months without replacement, three months past the maintenance window.
    - A corrosion-flagged two-inch weld on the starboard engine mount was documented eighteen months earlier and never repaired.
    - Sharon rationed half a liter of water per person per day and kept a waterproof log every morning for eleven days.

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    © 2026 OBOMEDIA. All rights reserved.
    This episode and its content (audio, text, and related materials) are the exclusive property of OBOMEDIA and are protected by applicable copyright laws. Reproduction, distribution, editing, or commercial use, in whole or in part, without prior written permission from OBOMEDIA is prohibited. For permissions, licensing, and business inquiries: business@obomedia.com.
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    16 min
  • The EPIRB Lied: How a Yellow Case Vanished From a Sunken Boat

    The EPIRB Lied: How a Yellow Case Vanished From a Sunken Boat
    Oct 10 2026
    The EPIRB Lied: How a Yellow Case Vanished From a Sunken Boat

    Fear that something meant to save you can betray you: a registered EPIRB activated and drifted forty miles away while April Cook floated alive in her life raft for ten days, and a bright yellow waterproof case that should have been lost at sea turns up dry on a dock pillar forty-one days later-how did the beacon lead rescuers away from the person it was meant to find?

    In this episode, you will hear the sequence of events from the moments before April unclipped her life raft through the ten days she spent drifting, the gear she saved and lost, and the way the EPIRB's true signal created an impossible gap between device and survivor-what broke the link between distress and rescue?

    Person: April Cook
    Date: October 4, 2019
    Location: Gulf (south of the Dry Tortugas; Celia Rae sank)
    Item: yellow waterproof case containing a digital voice recorder
    Event: EPIRB activated and drifted contrary to life raft

    - April clipped a yellow waterproof case containing a digital voice recorder to the life raft canopy at 5:40 AM on October 4, 2019.
    - The Celia Rae sank at 6:10 AM on October 4, 2019, after April had deployed the life raft.
    - The EPIRB activated on contact with water sometime before the boat sank and by 9:50 AM reported a position where April was already 11 nautical miles away.
    - April recorded her position every six hours on the raft GPS and spent ten days adrift, speaking into the recorder to stave off silence.
    - Forty-one days later, Ruth Bowers found the bright yellow waterproof case upright and dry on a dock pillar at Pelican Reach Marina around 7:30 AM on November 14, 2019.

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    © 2026 OBOMEDIA. All rights reserved.
    This episode and its content (audio, text, and related materials) are the exclusive property of OBOMEDIA and are protected by applicable copyright laws. Reproduction, distribution, editing, or commercial use, in whole or in part, without prior written permission from OBOMEDIA is prohibited. For permissions, licensing, and business inquiries: business@obomedia.com.
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    18 min
  • The Egg on the Raft: Why One Dry Suit Killed Three Sailors

    The Egg on the Raft: Why One Dry Suit Killed Three Sailors
    Oct 9 2026
    The Egg on the Raft: Why One Dry Suit Killed Three Sailors

    A single dry, uncracked hard‑boiled egg found on a drifting life raft became the quiet witness to a chain of failures that left three sailors fighting forty‑nine‑degree water and impossible choices. An eleven‑year‑old EPIRB with outdated firmware sent rescuers thirty‑one miles off course, one extra‑large dry suit belonged to an absent owner, and three lives hinged on who could - or would - wear it; how did routine checks and a single missing update become fatal? Which decision - human, technical, or procedural - ultimately decided who lived?

    In this episode, we follow the timeline of the Patience Gray from departure to sinking, moving through the weather changes, equipment failures, and the crew’s decisions that followed; what the record shows about that wrong EPIRB position and the moments on deck that led to a lone suit deciding three fates?

    Person: Connie Edwards
    Person: Marcus Brill
    Person: Frank Odum
    Person: Terry Wohls
    Event: Boat went down forty‑seven miles east of Gloucester

    - The raft had been drifting for four days before being sighted by Crystal Vickers through a telescope.
    - The EPIRB was eleven years old and produced a coordinate offset that sent rescuers thirty‑one miles in the wrong direction.
    - The Patience Gray left Millhaven at 07:40 on September 15 and encountered severe conditions by the afternoon of September 16.
    - Water temperature along the route on September 16 was 51°F, where muscular control is typically lost in roughly 30 minutes and unconsciousness within an hour.
    - There was one extra‑large Kokatat dry suit on board, belonging to Frank Odum, and it did not fit the three crew members properly.

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    © 2026 OBOMEDIA. All rights reserved.
    This episode and its content (audio, text, and related materials) are the exclusive property of OBOMEDIA and are protected by applicable copyright laws. Reproduction, distribution, editing, or commercial use, in whole or in part, without prior written permission from OBOMEDIA is prohibited. For permissions, licensing, and business inquiries: business@obomedia.com.
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    17 min
  • The Shoe on Marker Fourteen: Why She Was Found Alive, They Weren't

    The Shoe on Marker Fourteen: Why She Was Found Alive, They Weren't
    Oct 8 2026
    The Shoe on Marker Fourteen: Why She Was Found Alive, They Weren't

    A child's size four canvas sneaker, nailed to a red-and-white spar buoy seventy nautical miles from a sunken ketch, became the only clue that turned a closed search into a rescue. Two people died on the Ardent Meg, one survived, and the shoe belonged to none of them - how did that single sneaker change everything?

    In this episode, you’ll hear what unfolded from the Tuesday in August 2019 when a fifteen-year-old photographed a lone shoe, through the five days of official search that turned up no people, to the reconstruction that followed. What mistakes or missed signals left one survivor outside the search box while two others were lost?

    Date: August 2-5, 2019
    Location: Kellum Sound channel marker fourteen; roughly seventy nautical miles northeast of the Ardent Meg wreck
    Boat: Ardent Meg, 38-foot ketch, registered out of Brunswick, Georgia
    People: Paul Devlin (51), Rachel Slater (48), Kevin Trout (39)
    Search area covered: 140 square miles over five days

    - A size four white canvas sneaker with its lace still knotted was nailed to a red-and-white spar buoy (navigation marker fourteen).
    - The Ardent Meg burned to the waterline and sank eleven days before the shoe was found.
    - The EPIRB activated at 11:47 PM on August 4; signal reached the Marine Operations Center in four minutes.
    - By dawn on August 5, two aircraft and a Coast Guard cutter were searching a position sixty miles east-southeast of Brunswick.
    - The raft carried three liters of water, energy bars, and a flare kit; no raft or people were found within the search box despite nine hours of testimony and four months of reconstruction.

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    © 2026 OBOMEDIA. All rights reserved.
    This episode and its content (audio, text, and related materials) are the exclusive property of OBOMEDIA and are protected by applicable copyright laws. Reproduction, distribution, editing, or commercial use, in whole or in part, without prior written permission from OBOMEDIA is prohibited. For permissions, licensing, and business inquiries: business@obomedia.com.
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    19 min