Niamh McAnally's Sailing Scare in the Leeward Islands

Speaker 1

[00.00.00]

Yeah, I had my full weight belt. I was scuba gear. I had a whole lot. Meanwhile, on top side, it's now 45 minutes later. Guy is thinking she's either going to run out of air soon or it's like, it's time to come up. I need to know what's going on. So he taps on the line that he has me tied to, but the line is slack. So he pulls on the line, pulls it up. No sign of me. There's nobody on the end of the line.

Speaker 2

[00.00.24]

Hello, and welcome to one off Travel Stories. I'm your host, Andrew Turner here. Each episode I chat with someone about one of their favorite travel stories, that one story they've told countless times to friends and family around the dinner table. Today we're joined by Neve. Neve is an Irish born bestselling author, a speaker, a former TV director, and, of course, a consummate traveler. She's traveled all over the world. She's lived in many of the places she's traveled. She's also volunteered in many island nations in the Caribbean and South Pacific. Actually, you'll probably notice there's a common theme around the oceans the sea, the water. Her website is actually the writer on the water. Definitely go check it out. Today she's going to tell us a story about, um, being on the water. So sailing between Antigua and the US, a bit of a harrowing tale, actually. Things go a little awry. Uh, makes for a great story, but you'll probably be nervously sitting on the edge of your seat during some of it. With that said in the preamble, she'll tell the love story of how she met her husband. He's with her in her main story. So, uh, this episode has a little bit of everything, and, uh, I hope you enjoy. Hi, Neve, welcome to the podcast.

Speaker 1

[00.01.46]

It's a pleasure to be here with you. Thank you.

Speaker 2

[00.01.49]

Yeah, thanks. Thank you. Thank you for coming. It's great to have you. Really excited to chat. I, um, I typically open up, uh, with, uh. Where are you calling in from today?

Speaker 1

[00.01.59]

Actually, today I'm in Florida, and we're just getting ready. Myself and my husband are our guest speakers with Celebrity Cruises, so we're just preparing for our next set of talks in Japan. We're joining Celebrity Millennium shortly.

Speaker 2

[00.02.11]

Oh. That's amazing. Yeah. Um, is is, uh, is Florida home

Speaker 1

[00.02.15]

for you? Yeah, we have a home base here now.

Speaker 2

[00.02.17]

Okay, nice. So you're home, but you're you're preparing to head out. Um. And I'm sorry. It's in Japan. Are you. Is is it leave from Florida and go that way

Speaker 1

[00.02.27]

or. No, this particular one. We're going to jump on the ship in Tokyo.

Speaker 2

[00.02.31]

In Tokyo. Okay. Yeah, that's even more fun. So you're flying? Okay. Amazing. Well, um, thanks for taking the time. I, um, excited to chat with you. Did have. I mean, you've done a lot of travel. You've done some amazing writing, um, and some amazing volunteering. So, um, before getting into the sort of storytelling part, I did want to ask you some questions. Get to know you a little bit, because there's just so much amazing, amazing things, amazing stuff that you've done. But in particular, I was curious, um, you know, so much of your travel revolves around the sea. The water. Um, yeah. Sort of. What what what drove you to the sea? What brought you there? I know there's a lot of in there, but sailing, there's scuba diving, there's all sorts of stuff. So. Yeah. How did you how did you end up on the ocean?

Speaker 1

[00.03.18]

Well, I was born and raised in Ireland, and so nowhere in Ireland is more than like 50 miles from the sea, for starters. And I think one of the things, because Ireland is such a small country, I think that all of us were born with a passport in one hand and a backpack in the other, you know, and I think we were all born with traveling. I think the first time I was, uh, overseas was to Spain when I was 12, and I couldn't believe it, like it was February. And I thought, good Lord, there's a place where blue sky and sunshine. And that became my mission when I said, when I grow up, I'm going to go somewhere where it's warm and sunny, for starters. But the sea was right there, and that's where I learned to scuba dive, actually was in the Irish Sea, and people thought later they said, are you mad? Why would you dive there and say, well, that's where I lived and that's where the water was. Yeah. So I loved being on the water. Like to me now on in or under the ocean. That's my happy place. So all of my volunteer work has been around the sea and like, uh, volunteer projects with turtles and whales and dolphins. Obviously, dolphins is my main passion. And I know there's a ton of people around the world. Just there's something about the dolphins that, you know, lift your spirits, no matter how good or bad you feel. Right? That's. Yeah. So that's kind of what's always drawn me to the water.

Speaker 2

[00.04.28]

Yeah, that makes sense. It's, uh, being close to the sea, even if it's very cold, I mean. Good on you for, uh, everything in there. That's

Speaker 1

[00.04.36]

what they call. That's what dry suits are for.

Speaker 2

[00.04.38]

Yeah, yeah. That's true, I did I did notice to like a lot of your a lot of your writing. Um, a lot of, uh, your sort of trips. A lot of. It's recent. I was curious, and you mentioned Spain. Did you, you know, did you get sort of a travel bug right from when you were younger? Did you start traveling when you were younger, or is this something that happened a little bit later in life?

Speaker 1

[00.05.01]

No, I started very young. In fact, I left home per se at 17, and I went to live in Paris to go to school in Paris, because at the time Ireland was very much a homogenous society. And I had read an essay by Cardinal and John Henry Newman when we were in school doing English, and they were talking about it was a university, was a school of knowledge of every kind with teachers and learners from every quarter. And I thought, well, Ireland at that time in the 70s was very much a homogenous society. And I said, well, who am I going to meet and what diversity am I going to encounter? So that's why I went to Paris and that kind of started. I met people from all over the world at that stage and I thought, oh, I got to go to those places where those people live.

Speaker 2

[00.05.42]

Yeah. Um, after my own heart, I left. I left home at 17 to go to school in Europe, actually. And then once you open the door. Uh, there's no going back. That's true. Yeah. No, that's that's really interesting. So you went to school? Um, and then after that, you you just had sort of had the bug and started moving around. At what point? Sorry. Go ahead. Yeah.

Speaker 1

[00.06.07]

No, the other part of it is that both my parents were actors and they were both freelance actors. So they were used to maybe being in a in a show for like 3 or 4 weeks at a time. So I grew up with that concept of variety, and I then I became addicted to variety. So I again, I actually started off in theatre and television myself. So change was something that I was bread with, if you like. And so that too is part of the travel bug. You know, we're always looking for something new, something different. And I very rarely go back to a new play. I started to the same place because it's not just that you'd be the same place. I think sometimes when people go back to the same country or same location, it's not. You're trying to recreate it. And I don't think you can because it's all influenced by the places and the people that were there at the time. And then sometimes people are disappointed, you know? Um, so I'm I and the other thing is terrible, I know is kind of it's a tick box, too. I kind of like, like to collect places and countries to like, there's so much more in the world to see.

Speaker 2

[00.07.06]

Yeah. It's, uh, it's very hard to avoid doing that. I think, you know, I've spoken to a lot of travelers. I do it myself. This idea of, like, your country count, you know, everyone seems to. Seems to talk about that even though, uh, you know, countries are all, all shapes and sizes and there's different areas, but, um, it's true. It's hard not to when once you're, it's almost like human nature to sort of check off what you're done, kind of keep a list of things that you've done. When, um, when, when you were younger than were your parents. Was this all in Ireland? Were they moving around Europe? Did you guys move around a bunch back then?

Speaker 1

[00.07.43]

No. In fact, I'm probably the biggest traveler in my family. But I don't think my parents traveled much at all. Okay. Um, yeah, not not really. You know, I'm probably the the biggest traveler, actually, of all of us. There was four kids and my parents, obviously, who since passed. No, I don't think they. My mother actually did. She went to, uh, she went by herself a couple of times. But no, generally I'd probably be the biggest traveler.

Speaker 2

[00.08.05]

Okay. Um, and now you've also written a few books. Um, following Shaun Sunshine, I know is your is your personal memoir, but flares up is a story about two gentlemen. I believe it was Phil and Paul. Paul Hopkins, Phil puke. Um, and their story and then more recently, um, stories of place, which is, uh, I believe you're you're more of an editor on that one, is that correct?

Speaker 1

[00.08.34]

Yes, I edited that, but it's it's part of my international writing group. I have two stories in that one as well. There's nine of us have two stories each in that

Speaker 2

[00.08.41]

beautiful. And, um. Yeah. I mean, what, uh, I guess you had all these. You had all this travel, you had all this, uh, these amazing adventures. Is that kind of what led you to say, you know, I want to put pen to paper.

Speaker 1

[00.08.55]

Well, I've been writing since I was a kid. You know, I've written all the way through, and what had happened was, in my travels, I would start writing letters home. And rather than just say, hey, I'm doing fine, I suddenly found myself almost like a as a travel writer without knowing I was travel writing. And I was getting feedback like, oh my God, I felt like I was there, you know, I had that skill set. And also because I had been a TV director and a television director, it was like I could see in pictures, do you know what I mean? And one book that really influenced me way early on was a book called solo on Her Own Adventure, and that was edited by Susan Fox Rogers, and that was a collection of short stories by women who had traveled solo in the great outdoors. And I remember thinking, I want to be like those women. I want to be able to go solo in the great outdoors, and I want to be able to paint my picture in words, you know? And I think that was a big influence on me. And so I was always writing, always writing. And it wasn't until I got on a sailboat with Gary. And I'll tell you a little bit about that in a minute, that he read one of my short stories, he goes, oh my God, you got to do this full time. And that's when what is it now, nine years later, I've been writing full

Speaker 2

[00.10.07]

time. That's amazing. I, um yeah, there's something about reading in long form. Um. That is different. As much as I get a ton of great information from Instagram and TikTok in small, short form. Um, yeah. I still love reading people's memoirs and books, and there's a sort of a different type of learning depth there that you can't really get elsewhere. Right. So, um, yeah, really, I really appreciate these these type of books.

Speaker 1

[00.10.42]

Yeah. And I get a lot of feedback, especially on following sunshine, which is part of that story, is when I took a year out to volunteer travel, circumnavigate. I always qualify that by saying by plane, in this case, because most people think circumnavigation is by boat, which I think is the true definition. But like a lot of my volunteer projects were marine based in places like Vanuatu, Fiji, um, Tonga, those kind of places. And people would come back to me saying, I really enjoyed it because I know those are places I'm not at this stage in my life I'm not going to get to. So like, like it was, you know, it's a journey for me. And I got to see behind the curtain for those kind of countries. So that's that's part of why I do it as well and to share them. And so part of what I do too, is not just it's not just about me, it's not just my story, but it's about sharing the ideas and also sharing the cultures that you know of the people and what I'm finding. And I'm sure you're finding this as well. And all the people who travel is ultimately, yes, we have different cultures across the different countries we travel to. But, you know, underneath it all, essentially we're all the same human being. You know, we're all looking for love. We all want to love people. You know, it's we're the same human being across the world. We're from different economic backgrounds, maybe different cultures, different norms, but it's the same essential human being, I think.

Speaker 2

[00.11.59]

Yeah, I agree, um, what we what we sort of hear about every day in the media is completely different than, you know, life, life on the ground, if you will, like when you go into countries that are completely different and end up chatting with people living day to day life, it's yeah, it's a lot simpler than your, you know, your day to day life and how you think about living for sure.

Speaker 1

[00.13.45]

And I thought, perfect. All you would need is the plane fare to get there. Or it could be local. So it was really good. And we maintained quite a bit of staff as a result. So the following year when they closed for the whole year, I said, that's it. And I don't know what it is. Maybe it was eat, pray, love, but everybody seems to have this thing. I'll do it for a year. You know what I mean? Maybe she started it, but I decided, okay, I'm doing this for a year, so. And but my whole thing was traveling in one direction and come back to the same point. So I started off in London and I lined up these projects five hours a day, five days a week, and started off in Saint Barts. I helped a guy with a scuba, um, a scuba shop, um, and then down same, uh, to New Zealand, a little island off the coast of Auckland. And they were doing a, uh, hospitality business after Tonga. The longest time in Tonga, this remote island where there was an Australian family who had a swim with the whales business. They brought photographers out to swim with the humpback whales when they came up from Antarctica, and they had two teenage kids that were enrolled in distance learning in Australia. They were from Australia. And my job was to tutor them. And I was like, oh, I'm actually not a teacher, you know that, right? And they said yeah, that. Yeah. They're enrolled in distance learning. Just get their assignments in on time. Except when I got there they had no internet. And it was like, welcome to home schooling. And that was a bit of a challenge because one of the, one of the subjects was the Tongan language. And I was like, uh, yeah, I'm really fluent in Tongan. Not anyway, we figured all that out.

Speaker 2

[00.15.07]

Yeah. So wait, so your starting point was Sark Island? Yeah. And you had you basically, um, knew about work away and then you ended up using work away for yourself. Correct? Okay. Yes. I started lining up all these projects as I was going along. Um, anyway, I spent about four months down in Tonga and then moved around up to Palau, which was a beautiful dive site. As you can imagine, I almost decided to stop in Palau and get a job, and I almost had a job offer. Except Palau has a real housing crisis, so moved on from there, kept going through Asia and ended up back in London. Yea, done. Terrific start to say okay, settle down, do a little bit of work now. And I wasn't sure whether I wanted to stay in the Europe side of the Atlantic or go back to America. And. I was almost addicted to this website. It was like virtual travel, you know, from your own living room. And I found this final project I was going to do for one month, which was to volunteer crew for a solo sailor to bring his boat from Florida to the Bahamas, and it would take one month. Job done. I said, I'm going to do that. Not thinking, you know, the guy had like 20 or 30 applicants. But anyway. So anyway, he offered me the gig and then my family turns on to me and said, are you insane? You're going to go to sea with somebody you've never met? How do you know he's not an ax murderer? And what I found out later was his friends were saying, you're going to take on a woman you've never met. How do you know she's not a modern day pirate? She's going to take your boat and kick you overboard when you're 12 miles offshore. Anyways, so again, another lesson in trusting your instincts. I've just literally gone around the world in one direction by myself. I think I'll trust my instinct and I'll meet him on land. So off we went and we got. I was a month in and do you know what? Without a cell phone, without internet, what do you do at night? And you've got to rely on each other for your safety, right? Yeah. We got to

Speaker 1

[00.17.00]

talk and talk and talk and talk. And we got to know each other from the inside out. And one month turned into four. And suddenly on the high seas, like, kind of a little spark ignited between us and we. We literally met each other from the inside out. And you, honest to God, you wouldn't have picked each other out of a lineup. You know, there was no it wasn't like, oh, love at first sight, not at all. Right. And as time went by, uh, Gary will tell you, um, he was allergic to pecans and relationships. So he. Neither of us were looking for love.

Speaker 2

[00.17.31]

A lot of sailors are.

Speaker 1

[00.17.32]

Yeah, exactly. Why do you think he. His whole thing was, uh, he bought a boat to sail away because he thought would be very romantic. To have a woman in every port. And you have to be very careful what you ask the universe for. Be specific. Because he got a woman in every port. He just got the same woman in every port. Right. Anyways, so there we were. We were sailing along and it was about. We went all the way up to Maine, came all the way back down, did three years in the Bahamas and then another three years up and down, um, the Caribbean chain. We were four years into it on the deck in 29 is now 2019. And we're in Bec, one of the islands from Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and it's Thanksgiving and the sun is setting, and out comes a ring and a bottle of champagne. And he proposes. Yeah, yeah. So that was 2019 and we had set the wedding for the following year. And guess what happens? The world closes down. It's now Covid. Um.

Speaker 2

[00.18.29]

Before before we we get further along. I feel like I have to ask because you've been now. Um, a couple couple things came to mind, but, yeah. Um, I, I went to the South Pacific for the first time not too long ago. I know how far apart all those islands are. It's kind of. It's something that you don't really realize until you're there and how much space there is. But, um, it dawned on me you've been to a lot of islands. Probably more than anyone I've spoken to. Um, you know, even starting with Sark, which I had never heard of. I know there's some islands, like Jersey in the English Channel, but, um. Yeah. Like, is there something that has drawn you to islands in particular, or has this just happened?

Speaker 1

[00.19.09]

Funny you should ask. It took me a while. I'm very drawn to islands. The more remote, the better. And it took me a while. One day I was back in Dublin visiting very recently. I figured it out. There's an island called lamb Bay off the coast of Dublin, and we used to scuba dive off the back end of it. It's a private island and I figured out this is back in the 80s. We used to dive. There was a wreck called a tailor. We dived on. And when I say a shipwreck, it's not like a boat sitting upright on the bottom. No, it's just like, looks like rubble. Right. And because it was private, you were never allowed on the island. And for some reason, for me, that had a mystique about it, you know, and like, I wanted, oh, those people who get to go on that island, that's very exciting. And so for me, I think the more remote the island and the more mystique it is. And, you know, only a couple of people live on the island. I've always loved that. Like on Sark, it's an island with no airport, only accessible by ferry, and the residents number around about 430 people. And there's no, no paved roads. And it's 300. It rises 300ft out of the ocean. Fascinating. First dark sky island in the world, by the way. And then Enya had an album she released as a result of that. It's called dark Sky Island. Hmm. Yeah. Fascinating. There's eight islands, actually, in the Channel Islands there altogether, huh?

Speaker 2

[00.20.26]

Really interesting. Okay, so, um. Yeah, I like that way of thinking of it. That sort of mystique that that islands have. I know, like, there's something I mean, I grew up in, in cities and traveled a lot. There's something about the remoteness that either. I think it seems like people are either drawn to or anxious about. Right. Like right. Complete disconnect. Nothing really around. Not really that many. That many. That many people even. But it seems like you're very comfortable with

Speaker 1

[00.20.58]

that. I love it. In fact, I was just up in New York City last weekend and it was great. Abuzz. It was like I was in and out for 2 or 3 days. But please don't ask me to live there. My escape was into Central Park. The blossoms and the nature and the water and the trees. It was lovely. Do you know what I mean? But that's who I am. I'm a nature girl. I'm not. I'm not a city girl. I didn't grow up with it. And again, I grew up. I think a lot happens in your childhood. Where were you raised? You know, I was raised literally. I could walk out my garden and there was the sea. When I was walking to school, the sea would crash over the wall and maybe drown you on the way to school. You know, I think that and I remember when I was in Paris, I met a girl who was from Austria, and I craved the water. So I used to go down to the, to the banks of the sand. And it was the only time I ever lived inland. And she would crave the mountains, you know. So I think I think that has a huge influence as to where you were raised.

Speaker 2

[00.21.51]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I, uh, I'm mountains myself, but, uh, I was not raised anywhere near mountains. It's just I skied a lot and kind of like your mystique with the with the island that you couldn't go on. Yeah. Towns have always been the place that I wanted to be, but I couldn't have. So, um. Yeah, I. I'm aligned with you there. Okay. So that's helpful. I just I think it's fascinating. I think islands are really fascinating. I've always found exploring them to be one of the most fun. It's you've got this condensed area so you can get to everywhere and just find nooks and crannies, which I think is really, really cool. But, um, okay, so it's you're coming up to 2020, uh, you're newly married. Um, and you're in Suburbian

Speaker 1

[00.22.37]

somewhere. We are. We're actually in Antigua, and, um, we did a legal ceremony. Toes in the sand. Just the two of us were two couples who were sailors. We were planning a big wedding in Ireland. And of course, that got cancelled. And a month later, um, we were still in Antigua, and we saw these two guys come ashore who had rowed a 20 foot rowboat across the Atlantic from the Canary Islands. And we came out and we took a photograph of their moment of triumph when they held their flares up, invited them onto our sailboat the next night and started to hear their story. And they found out I was a writer. And I said, yeah, I'd write their story as long as it was about why they did it and how it affected their families and how the experience changed them as human beings. So that so then I sort of put my own memoir aside and continued to write that book, and then that came out later. But what happened? We went the the world shut down, as you know, we ended up having to haul the boat in Antigua because we were trying to get to Bonaire, which would have been south of the hurricane belt. But literally the ports were closing all around us and everybody said, yeah, the next supply boat is coming in, but you, uh, there won't be anything after that. And there was only two ICU beds in, um, in Antigua. And they said to us, well, obviously they'll take care of locals. And our problem was we only had, um, I had health insurance everywhere except America, and Gary only had health insurance in America. And people said, don't separate because you might not get back together. We'd heard of an English couple. She had gone back earlier and she couldn't get back all that kind of stuff. Anyway, long story short, we ended up back in Florida and we couldn't get back to our boat for 18 months when we finally got back in 2021. Yeah, I think it was October 21st. We found that the boat, which had been sitting up in the heart, basically the boat had got Covid, the batteries were fried, etc. we put her in the water. It took us nine weeks to get the boat shipshape again and off we set. Well, we started to head out to Saint Barts and it's an overnight passage. Yeah, and we haven't sailed in. What is it, 18 months?

Speaker 2

[00.24.50]

Yeah. You're basically. What is that? Moored for 18 months? Yes. And we were on dry land and we were in a house with doors, and you know what I mean? And space and dishwashers. And we've got a little soft for starters. I have to say that. And I was like, okay, how does this work? You know, it's a nice passage and, you know, you're on watch by yourself. And we're, you know, we're not even talking to each other. We're like ships passing in the night. We were also buddy sailing with another couple that were on a trawler. So we get through the night and it's it's now 7 a.m., the dawn is coming up. And next thing, because we were trying to keep up with another friend on a trawler. We are what we call motor sailing. The engine is running. We've got the sails flying. Okay. Next thing. Bang! And it's like, look up and down below the stern. There's this black line coming out of the back of the boat and think, oh my God, we've wrapped some kind of a rope around the propeller. Okay. Yeah,

Speaker 1

[00.25.43]

we are in 5000ft of water beneath us, right? Not one you can stand up in. So, of course, me being the scuba instructor and Gary, believe it or not, had been recently certified. I said, well, I should go in and try and, you know, sort it out. So.

Speaker 2

[00.25.57]

And right now, just, uh, try to place this, um, in my mind, you're coming down from Florida to Saint Barts, so you're sort of. No. Sorry.

Speaker 1

[00.26.05]

So the. We had flown down. So the boat had been on the heart. It had been taken out of the water and left in Antigua.

Speaker 2

[00.26.12]

Oh, yeah. Okay. We

Speaker 1

[00.26.13]

were on land in Florida. We flew back to Antigua to get the boat right after Covid. And we, uh, we had sailed through the night trying to get back to Saint Barts. In other words, we were making our way towards America with the boat. Okay. And so we were heading north, right? Yeah. And our next, our next port of call was Saint Barts. And when, uh, so we said, okay, I'll go down with my knife and we'll I'll cut off whatever this rope is. And we. Gary was very smart. He says, okay, I'm going to tie a rope around you, and I'm going to tie you to the boat because we're literally in the middle of the ocean, right? And it wasn't a very calm day, let's put it that way. Like, that's where the Atlantic is now, meeting the Caribbean Sea. And you're between islands. So there's a lot of this, like waves crashing up and down. So I said okay. So he ties a rope around me, ties it to the boat. I have all my scuba gear on, and I get down underneath and I one of these serrated knives that's like a jack knife. So I have tied that to my wrist. I go under and oh my goodness, the current is running so strong. I'm holding on to the rudder and my body is like coming out like a flagpole. Dude are like waving like a flag about like 30 knots. Yeah. And it's so strong, I'm not able to go up and tell him. Hey, it's strong here. I just thought, I've got to pull myself towards the propeller. And when I get there, I see it's not, you know, two foot of lying around the. No, this is a ball of, uh, more rope than I've ever seen anywhere. I mean, it's bigger. Excuse me. It's bigger than my dinghy. Almost. And I start cutting, and it is wrapped so tightly around the prop. Like, as I'm cutting, I'm getting, like, one strand of, you know, the way a rope is, like, three strands wrapped around each other, like a plant, one strand at a time. And I'm, like, cutting and cutting and cutting and nothing. There's nothing going on. I'm like, Holy smack! And I'm hanging on. I'm hanging on. Hang on. And I don't know how much time is passing. And then all of a sudden I look down. This rope is obviously been in the water for quite some time because it's all full of barnacles. And now I'm looking at my arm and I'm looking at my leg and I'm just barnacles are slashing my arm. My like now I'm bleeding all over and I'm thinking I'm in the ocean, in deep, deep water. In the middle of nowhere and I'm bleeding. This is not a good scene, you know? Yeah. How about now? I get out, right, and go back and tell it what's going

Speaker 2

[00.28.31]

on? And you had your when you with your scuba gear. So you were actually did you have your tank on and everything.

Speaker 1

[00.28.38]

Yeah, I had my full weight belt. I was scuba gear. I had a whole lot. So I wasn't on snorkel. I was actually on scuba gear. Yeah. Meanwhile, on top side, it's now 45 minutes later. Guy is thinking she's either going to run out of air soon or it's like, it's time to come up. I need to know what's going on. So he taps on the line that he has me tied to to think, okay, you know, signaling me to come up. But the line is slack. So he pulls on the line, pulls it up. No sign of me. There's nobody on the end of the line. So now he's panicking, thinking, oh my God, I've lost her. Right? Yeah. So so that's going on. He's he's totally panicking. And then eventually anyway, I come up. So I was still actually attached to the boat because I'm actually embroiled in this line that has all the barnacles on the one that is tied underneath the boat.

Speaker 2

[00.29.25]

Did you know that you had lost the. No, I didn't know,

Speaker 1

[00.29.28]

I didn't know, so I come anyway to the stern of the boat. Now I can't get on the boat because the the stern of a sailboat has about three steps, steps to it, you know, the, the metal steps that come down. Well, the boat is literally pitching backwards and forwards. So the stepladder is going up three feet above my head and then smacking down, up and down, up, down. And I have literally no strength left in my arms and I'm trying to reach it and I can't. I've got all the heavy gear. And then the worst thing happens, my knife is still around my my wrist and Gary reaches over and I'm screaming at him, no, because I'm scared I'm going to pull him in and we're both going to be in the water and he's trying to close the knife. I don't realise that at first. So eventually we figured this out and I said, okay, give me the rope ladder from the dinghy. So he finally puts that in the water, and I managed to tie that to the bottom rung of the step ladder, like the metal step ladder. And as the boat pitches it, it floats out and I float my body up on top of that. And as it swings the next upswing, I swing up towards the boat. And then he kind of grabs me, pulls me in, and here's how I know it was kind of dodgy. He grabs me, brings me onto the boat, and he goes, I love you, I love you, I love you, and that's how I know. Oh my God, that was kind of close. He gets me. I'm now hypothermic. He gets me and strips me out of my gear and my clothes, and I'm no good for the rest of the day. We're still got a ball of rope underneath where he can't use the motor. He radios our friends and they they have wrapped some rope around theirs. They can't move. They say, okay, we're going to make a left turn and head for Saint Kitts, which is closer, but they can still motor a little bit. And Gary says, I can't move over there because of the sail direction. There's I can't get there. I've got to keep heading towards Saint Barts. And they said, okay, we're going to head towards Saint Barts also. We'll get there. We'll drop our hook, we'll come back in our dinghy and try and tow you in. Right. We're we're still miles from Saint Barts. That happens. 4 or 5 hours later. It's now getting dark. Now, any sailor will tell you the last thing you do before you come into anchor is you drop your sales and you motor in no motor. What can you do? Now there's a storm coming. So he can't do that. And finally, our friends Roy and Tacy cannot turn and come back out because the storm is coming. So they get on the radio and say, we need some help now. Martinique Coast Guard is on the radio saying, uh, how many souls are on board? And of course, that phrase goes in my head like, oh my God, how many souls is that? Like, I'm dying, we're going to die in the rose going down. Anyway, long story short, one, uh, one of the captain breaks in, says, oh, we've got a tender. We'll come and get you. And I'm thinking a tender. This tender is with us in 3 or 4 minutes. It was one of the Russian mega yachts, had a boat bigger than our sailboat that came out. And goddess told us in, dropped our hook in Saint Bart's Anchorage, which is very rolly. Anchorage,

Speaker 2

[00.32.24]

like a fancy Russian yacht style. Is that

Speaker 1

[00.32.27]

one of the mega yachts? Like they're there, they're dinghy. Right. Which is like bigger than our sailboat comes out and gets us. Now, one thing I knew about, um, maritime laws. If they throw you their line and you put it on your boat, that's technically salvage. And they can they can claim your boat. So I knew enough to know to say, I'm throwing you my line and you attach it to your boat, right? I still own my boat. But they were like, oh, no. And I said, no, no, let's do it that way. And they wanted me to put my line, um, on my two bow cleats and run it as a triangle. And they were tied to that. And I went, that doesn't make sense. The the the line would chafe and they go, okay. And I was I was so out of it. I said, okay, maybe you know more than I do. And sure enough, 100ft down the road, boom! The line snapped. And finally, anyway, I said, okay, well, we'll take your line. And of course, they're both so big it barely fit around our boat anyway. They tow us in. They have us drop the the anchor and I went, where are we close to this other boat. It's dark. And, um, anyway, they said no, it's the only space. We dropped the anchor 2:00 in the morning. Bang! We obviously bumped into another boat, and I look, and there's this other person next to us, turns on his engine, and he's looking underneath. He has wrapped his propeller to the line that's under our boat. He's now attached to us. He is swinging our boat and his boat to the trawler which our friends are in, which also has line under their boat. So all three of us are now laced underneath together anyway, so we all stay up all night long and watch the boats. The next morning, our friends come over and he, uh, Roy comes under with his hook of gear and he uncorks it. He says, NE, if there's no way you could have got this all by yourself. We finally all put it all into the dinghy. We go ashore and we check in to Saint Barts because, you know, we've arrived in another country. We're sitting on the dock and Gary's on the phone to his family. I look at my phone and there's a text from my agent in Ireland, and he says, call me. And I go, Gary, get off the phone. We're going to call Brian. And sure enough, I call him. And we had kind of got to that stage where we were saying, you know, it's may be time to get off the water. Maybe we got out alive. And, uh, sure enough, earlier on, about a year earlier, my brother in Ireland had said to me, I said to Gary, he said, you know, you guys are absolute idiots. Been out there in the water all by yourselves. What are you going to do when he starts getting published? And Gary said, oh, it's easy. We'll we'll just park the boat. And we'd kind of got to that stage. And when we said, when we said to call Brian and he calls me and says that. Yeah, I just sold your first book. Flares Up is about to be published. And we went see, one door closes, another one opens.

Speaker 2

[00.35.13]

That's amazing. Um. What what what an adventure. I feel like there's there's a lot of questions about sailing that you've touched on that I've thought about, and I've just wondered, like. Um, so specifically in the rough water, getting in, getting in the water like that. I mean, you, you know, you people scuba dive off the boat all the time, but in a sailboat, especially if you don't have an engine. I like I always figured that seems very risky, but I'm not sure. Like as the water's moving, as you said, there's a current under there, and I was nervous listening to the story the whole time. So, um, like, is that I guess you usually just don't go in the water or if you need to, you tie yourself off. That's what it sounds like.

Speaker 1

[00.35.57]

Yeah. I mean, ordinarily, I mean to go scuba diving for pleasure. You would be on anchor somewhere and you'd be near a reef, you know? So yeah, that would be the normal situation. But to do repair underwater? Um, yeah. It's not ideal, you know, but in a situation like normally under sail, you know, you would sail somewhere. Um, but the problem with sailing is, uh, a lot of times you're trying to get from A to B, uh, one of the beauties of people who are what I call day sailing is they can go out. And if the wind is blowing this direction, well, go that direction, then turn around and come back in. Um, but for sailors who are trying to get from one island to the next, they have to go. You know, they have to tack and go left or right and use the wind. Yeah. Um, so, uh, yeah, I wouldn't normally go in the water on scuba under a boat when there's 5000ft of water underneath me. Uh, I certainly wouldn't choose to, uh, bleed underwater when it's in, you know, that kind of conditions. But, you know, I, I would probably rethink it next time. You know, um, but, you know, you got to do what you got to do. Yeah.

Speaker 2

[00.37.00]

And, I mean, you didn't know necessarily what was under there. So you got you got to get a look, right? Right. You got to get a look. You definitely have to get a look. And I think I tell you what, I think what we probably would do next time if there was a next time is we would just stop and think a little, you know what I mean? Like I thought, oh, it's got to be done right away. Do you know, maybe we should have taken a breath and just say, okay, let's just assess. And interestingly enough, because I was trained in television direction, I think very quickly. Gary, on the other hand, is so calm under pressure. And he just he's a much more methodical thinker than I am. And when we first made our very first passage across the Gulf Stream, you know, the underwater river that runs up the east coast of America, um, you know, up the Florida coast. When we first were going from Florida to the Bahamas, we actually had engine trouble then. And, um, he wanted to think it through. And I'm like, oh, come on, come on, make a decision. This is why we butted heads the first trip we were out. He, uh, he sits and thinks things through. We usually get to the same conclusion, but I was like, could we could we make that decision today? You know? Um, so, so I think I'm learning from him over the years that maybe I should rethink this, slow down a little bit. And I'm sorry, looking back at that, I would definitely slow down. But there's as you know, there's some times where you should react a little quicker, you know. Yeah,

Speaker 1

[00.38.19]

absolutely. You got to take action.

Speaker 2

[00.38.20]

Yeah. I mean, but the sound of it too, even if you wanted to sail, you'd be dragging this huge. I mean, you'd be going nowhere, right. Nowhere quickly anyway. And stability and all that stuff too. So, yeah, I mean, um, a bit harrowing, especially with, uh, with the storm coming. I mean, when you say that you're basically just adrift, uh, right. Absolutely not where you want to be on the outside of the islands, especially all that, all that stuff. So, um, I mean. It's not. It's nice that at least there's a lot of islands and people around there. As you know, we were, I was mentioning in the Pacific with islands so far apart. Mhm. Um, you might not have someone there so quickly. So at least you had that going for

Speaker 1

[00.39.06]

you. Exactly. Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2

[00.39.08]

Yeah. I always wondered too. Um, you see all the sailboats moored in the bay and obviously they all move together with the waters. So when you said you you bump into one in the middle of the night, I was like, I can't believe that doesn't happen more often. Like,

Speaker 1

[00.39.24]

well, interestingly enough, the way the way the rules or the unwritten rules work is, um, first of all, the last person who comes in, they're the one at fault, right? Because the other guy was mine, his own business, and he was already parked, per se. So it all it's all got to do with what they call a scope. How much chain or road, as it's called, that you put in. Right. And people measure that by their depth. So, so a ratio of like let's say 7 to 1. So, so let's say your depth is ten feet underneath you. Then you would put in 70ft of, of anchor chain. Right. And if everybody put in that 70ft you would all swing at the same time and the same distance. But if I've put in 70ft and the guy beside me has only put in 50ft. Well, I'm going to swing further and I'm going to bump into him. So in the middle of the night, I can't go knock on his head and scream. Hey, how much road have you put in? Now, if I'm far enough away, that's not going to happen. But that Anchorage is particularly crowded. And because of that, and because. And that's why I was questioning the guys who were dropping me. And he says, drop here. And I'm like, I had no control over where they were putting me. And I felt it was too close to start with. But I had no choice in this situation. And so I was really not surprised that we bumped into him, you know? And luckily we didn't damage his boat. It was a bump, you know, but but the underneath tangle that was going on, it was like a little underwater. It was just like, oh, it was just like a calamity, you know? And you know everything when one thing, it's not one error ever, you know, that that causes a mayhem. It's usually one thing on top of another, thing on top of another thing. Right? Yeah. It's it's the issue,

Speaker 2

[00.41.05]

you know, I mean, if you got the if you were able to cut the ball off, you, you know, you, you could have got into, into, into port, you wouldn't have tangled up with other people. Yeah. Definitely a calamity of errors. It's it's hard to notice. It's happening in the moment too, you know, when one error is leading to another. Um, you can you might be able to pick up on it, but maybe there's nothing you can do about it, right? Like.

Speaker 1

[00.41.30]

And I think that's a cautionary tale for all of us who travel, especially if you're solo traveling. And that's one thing I've learned over time is, you know, that little instinct you get, uh, you know, they call it like the hairs on the back of your neck. And that I think as the more seasoned traveler you become, you've got to listen to that very first instinct. You kind of think something's not quite right here. And a lot of times you go, oh, it's fine, it's fine, you know, and then the next little thing or the next little thing and I think I've started to listen to that. And that's why when my family turned to me and said, you're going to go to sea with an ax murderer, um, I was I'd already done an awful lot of traveling. And I think, no, I know I'm meeting the guy on land. I'll get a vibe on him, you know? Although, you know, I was. Maybe I was lucky, you know? But I think that's a lesson for all of us is to just pay attention. Yeah,

Speaker 2

[00.42.19]

I will say there's no there's no payoff for making good decisions. You don't end up with, uh, with a with a fun story, but you, uh, you stay alive, so. And healthy. So that's probably more, more

Speaker 1

[00.42.32]

important. You get to take another country off your

Speaker 2

[00.42.35]

your list. Yeah, yeah. Or whatever, whatever it may be. Because you're right. The more you travel, you start to pick up on things. I mean, the more you take flights, the more you realize, oh, yeah, this delay, this flight's going to be canceled. You just know, right? You just start figuring it out. Um, well, I you mentioned at the end of the story, you know, one door closing, another opening. Have you been, um. Have you been sailing? I know you guys are doing this cruise coming up and speaking. So have you been off the off the water as far as sailing goes? For a little while

Speaker 1

[00.43.08]

now. So what we did was we brought the boat back around the sailboat. And um, as Gary says, he's not missing doing boat yoga anymore. You gotta, you know, he's still looking for that joint between his wrist and his elbow because, you know, fixing a boat at sea. And you just have to put yourself into these yoga positions that you were never designed to do. Oh, so we ended up selling the sailboat, and now we we do live on the water here in Punta Gorda in Florida. And so we have a runabout boat for Charlotte Harbor, which is fantastic. But then now we've stepped into this new sort of phase of our lives. And like I said, we're guest speakers with Celebrity Cruises. So most of us from June on we'll be in Japan. And then we've got, um, we're back over into the med, so we'll be doing all the med and Greece and, and Croatia and all of that area, and then we'll be from there. We'll go on to Southampton and we'll bring one of the ships back from Southampton. We'll do the transatlantic coming across back over to Florida. So that's kind of the back end of the year. And it's really yeah, it's awesome. We love it because we're on the water. But you know what the funny thing is the very first time we did one of the cruises, we were thinking, wait a minute, we have lived on a sailboat by ourselves, just the two of us, and we've gone to these idyllic little remote islands and beautiful beaches. And the thing they used to say about the Bahamas was, if you get to this remote, beautiful beach and there's somebody on it, we'll just sail to the next one, it'll be all yours, you know? And we thought, how are we going to feel going on a cruise ship with 2000 of our new best friends? Right. And I do believe everything is mindset and how you approach everything. And Gary feels the same way. And so what we decided ahead of time was we're are going to love it, whether we love it or not. We are going to love it. And you know what, Andrew? We got on that ship. The very first one happened to be in Italy and we loved it. First of all, there was another captain worried about the weather. There was another galley slave. It wasn't me. There was somebody coming in doing the laundry. Because when you live in a sailboat, you have got to schlep your gear into the dinghy, go ashore, find, hike to a laundromat, find it, sit there like a student watching it, going around for three hours and come back again. That's your day, you know. And we absolutely enjoyed it. And we're on the water. But we this last, last year we did, uh, it was a nine day passage. I know from Lisbon. We brought the boat back to Tampa. This was on the ships. And the beauty of it was one of our talks was on flares up. And the whole story of these guys rowing across the Atlantic, and we were able to share with the audience, like, have a look out the window. We were about five days out in the Atlantic and we said, can you imagine we're on a thousand long, 1000 foot long ship? Can you imagine being in a 20 foot rowboat? Excuse me? Um, imagine what it's like, you know, so it's wonderful for us telling the stories of being on the sea and then being on the sea, talking to them. So we're living our best lives, like, you know, my brand is the writer on the water, and we're still the rider on the water and we get to do it together, which is brilliant.

Speaker 2

[00.45.56]

That is brilliant. I was going to say so. Um, Gary, Gary also is a speaker with you alongside? Yes.

Speaker 1

[00.46.03]

Yeah. We're both. We both do it together now, and it's kind of fun because we're one of the few couples speakers, you know, on the ships, and people love the banter between us. You know, it's kind of fun. And we do this thing with one of our, um, one of our, uh, talks is from captain and crew to husband and wife. And we start off at the stages are huge. I don't know if you've been on cruise ships, but they're like. Like they're big production theatres. Yeah, we start off on either side of the stage and it's like, how come one person who grew up in Los Angeles and the other one grew up in Ireland, how come we ended up on this same stage and we and he was big into volunteering as well. He's done, um, you know, projects in Peru and China. He's a big, um, potter and sculptor. Beautiful work. Uh, how come we end up in the same stage and we do this whole thing about how we moved around all the world and different places. And there's one point. It's kind of funny. There's one point where we both ended up in Los Angeles. It was when he was looking for his boat, and we had this little thing where he'd go, uh, and where it was near, and one guy from the audience shouts up Dublin! Oh, no, no, no. I tell like, when I get it. That's right, I get to Los Angeles, somebody says, and where it was scary. And they go, he was in Dublin. I know he was in Los Angeles, in Marina del Rey. I was in Marina del Rey at the time, and I was in a building literally right there. We never met. And it was like that sliding doors moment. You know, we weren't ready. We weren't ready to

Speaker 2

[00.47.19]

meet. I can feel your your TV direction coming out and in your

Speaker 1

[00.47.23]

head. Yeah, we we love it. We. Absolutely. It's so fun. It's so fun.

Speaker 2

[00.47.27]

That's a beautiful story. Um, well, the the longer. The longer love story. The rope around the prop, not so much. Yeah. So much. Beautiful as a bit chaotic. But, um. Neve, thank you so much for for joining me for telling the story. Um, yeah, I really appreciate it. And and thank you for for writing all your stories and your memoirs. As we talked about earlier, for me. It's always been very motivating to read these and, and think about, um, you know, places where maybe I can go someday. But as you said, for a lot of people, they might not be able to make it there. And they still get to sort of dream about it or imagine it or kind of visualize it like they were there. So. So thank you. Oh,

Speaker 1

[00.48.11]

you're more than welcome. Thank you so much. It's been fun talking with you. Fun

Speaker 2

[00.48.15]

talking with you as well. A big thank you to Neve for coming on the show and telling us one of her great stories. A bit of a wild one. Lots of ups and downs. Glad everything turned out all right. Again, you can find her, uh, at the writer on the water.com. Um, definitely suggest checking out her website and her books. And, of course, if you've got an amazing story to tell, please feel free to reach out. You can find me at one off Travel stories.com.