When Deborah Scaling-Kiley found herself stranded in the Atlantic Ocean with four other people, she had no way of knowing that the ordeal would cost three of her crewmates their lives.
The then 24-year-old was on a sailing trip from Maine to Florida in 1982 when a tropical storm overturned the luxury yacht she was traveling aboard. What followed was five terrifying days in a life raft, surrounded by sharks, with dwindling supplies and no guarantee that anyone would make it out alive.
Deborah survived. But the mistakes made by some of the people alongside her proved fatal.
Sailing trip turned into a nightmare
Deborah was aboard a yacht called Trashman with its captain, John Lippoth, his girlfriend, Meg Mooney, yachtsman Brad, and a man named Mark Adams.
Their mission was to deliver the vessel to its new owner. However, just two days into the trip, a tropical storm capsized the boat in the Atlantic.
The five people managed to reach an inflatable life raft, but escaping the sinking yacht was only the beginning of their ordeal.
Sharks soon surrounded the small craft, with some even ramming into it as they attempted to reach the people inside.
Speaking about the experience on the television show I Shouldn’t Be Alive, Deborah recalled just how quickly the danger became apparent.
“The minute we got in there were fins surrounding the dinghy,” she said.
“They were everywhere.”
The situation became even more frightening after Meg injured her leg. Her wound began bleeding, leaving the group trapped.
As the days passed, her condition deteriorated. With no fresh water available, dehydration also took a severe toll on the crew.
Eventually, desperation and exhaustion began affecting their judgment.
Two men made the same deadly decision
With the group becoming increasingly delirious, John and Mark began drinking seawater. But drinking seawater can make dehydration worse. John soon began hallucinating.
He eventually jumped into the ocean, apparently convinced that he could see land nearby. It was a decision that would cost him his life.
Deborah later described the horrifying moment.
“All of a sudden we just hear this shrill scream. Blood-curdling. Then it was over, silence. There was no crying, nothing. There was no doubt what got him. The sharks got him,” Deborah said.
Mark was the next to leave the raft. Also suffering from delusions, he reportedly believed he was heading to a nearby store to buy beer and cigarettes. Like John, he was killed by the sharks.
The heartbreaking loss of Meg
Meg’s condition continued to worsen inside the raft. Her leg became infected, and she eventually died.
“It was such a sad moment because we laid her naked body on the side of the raft and then we decided we couldn’t just roll her off. She needed some sort of funeral,” Deborah explained.
“So we said the Lord’s Prayer and Psalm 23 and we gently pushed her body overboard. Then we decided to go back to sleep so when the sharks attacked we wouldn’t have to see it.”
A cargo ship finally appeared
By this point, Deborah and Brad had endured days of fear, thirst, exhaustion, and unimaginable grief.
Then, just when the situation seemed almost impossible to escape, a cargo ship appeared. Deborah and Brad were rescued.
“I didn’t care who these people were or where we were going,” she said.
“I was there and Brad was there and we were alive.”
Survived five days adrift in shark-infested waters
Deborah eventually became a motivational speaker and wrote a book about what she had endured. Brad continued working at sea, but the psychological effects of the disaster stayed with him.
“It’s not something that you turn off once you’ve been through it,” he said, according to VT.
“You keep living in survival mode. I don’t know if you’re shell-shocked but it’s impossible to just turn it off and live the way you did before.”
It is impossible to know whether every member of the group could have survived had circumstances unfolded differently. However, staying aboard the raft would have kept them out of the water and away from the immediate danger posed by the sharks.
For Deborah and Brad, survival ultimately came down to enduring the ordeal until help arrived – and living with the memories of those who never made it home.
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