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The 16 minutes that plunged the Bayesian yacht into a deadly spiral

Until midnight last Sunday, Matteo Cannia was sitting out on a bench overlooking the sea in Porticello. It was too hot to sleep.

The 78-year-old, a fisherman since the age of 10, saw the first flashes of lightning. "I heard the thunder and the wind and decided to go home," he told me.

"As the storm grew, everyone woke. Water was coming into my friend’s house."

At about 04:15 local time, Fabio Cefalù – a fisherman who had been due to go out that wild Monday morning but, like others, decided against it – suddenly saw a flare go up.

He changed his mind and went out to sea to find out what was going on – and discovered only cushions and floating planks of wood.

A luxury super yacht called the Bayesian, moored only a few hundred metres away, had already sunk.

It all happened in a 16-minute window of disaster , chaos and torment, which catapulted a sleepy Sicilian fishing port to the centre of world news.

All but seven of the 22 people on board the Bayesian - 12 passengers and 10 crew - had scrambled into a life raft as the yacht began to capsize. The others never made it out.

Charlotte Golunski, a British woman, was thrown into the water with her one-year-old daughter, Sophie. She told of clutching her baby in the air with all her strength to keep her from drowning. "It was all black around me," she said, "and the only thing I could hear were the screams of others."

She, her baby, and her husband James were among those rescued by a nearby sailing boat captain. Trapped inside the sinking Bayesian was her colleague Mike Lynch – one of the UK’s top tech entrepreneurs, dubbed “Britain’s Bill Gates”.

Luxury turned to terror

Mr Lynch had brought together family, friends and colleagues for an idyllic holiday on his luxury boat: a sumptuous 56-metre (184ft) sailing yacht that won design awards and had the world’s tallest aluminium mast.

In June, he was acquitted after a lengthy trial in the US on charges that he had fraudulently inflated the value of his company, Autonomy, before selling it to Hewlett Packard in 2011. The trip was planned as a celebration of freedom to mark his rehabilitation in public opinion.

Three days after the yacht went down, his body was retrieved by divers from the wreckage.

A day later, the body of his 18-year-old daughter Hannah, who was due to begin studying at the University of Oxford next month, was recovered.

Among the others who died were the president of the investment bank Morgan Stanley, Jonathan Bloomer, and his wife Judy; Mr Lynch’s lawyer Chris Morvillo and his wife Neda; and the yacht’s chef, Recaldo Thomas. Mr Lynch’s wife, Angela Bacares, survived.

The family has released a statement talking of their “unspeakable grief”, adding they are “devastated and in shock”.

How the super yacht sank so quickly while other smaller vessels nearby survived the storm undamaged has dumbfounded experts.

In a press conference this weekend – the first public statement by officials since the disaster – local prosecutors said they had begun an investigation into potential crimes of manslaughter and negligent shipwreck.

The region’s state prosecutor Ambrogio Cartosio told reporters that while the probe was at a very early stage and nobody specific was being investigated, there were “many possibilities for culpability. It could be just the captain. It could be the whole crew… we are absolutely not ruling anything out”.

A small team of British marine investigators has also been sent to Sicily to work with their Italian counterparts.

Prosecutors said that they now believed a downburst was the weather phenomenon that hit the ship: a localised, powerful wind that descends from a thunderstorm and spreads unpredictably.

That contradicted previous reports that had identified the cause as a waterspout , or mini tornado at sea.

Either way, it’s clear extreme weather played a major role.

The crucial 16-minute window

Much of the focus for the investigation team is of course on the conduct of the captain, 51-year-old James Cutfield from New Zealand. He survived, along with eight of his crew, and is being questioned.

“We didn’t see it coming,” he told Italian media, alluding to the storm, in his only public comment so far.

The problem is: plenty of others did. Violent winds and rain were forecast, following days of searing heat. The head of the company that built the Bayesian, Giovanni Costantino, told me he was convinced there had been a litany of errors on board.

“At the back of the boat, a hatch must have been left open,” he said, “but also perhaps a side entrance for water to have poured inside.

"Before the storm, the captain should have closed every opening, lifted anchor, turned on the engine, pointed into the wind and lowered the keel."

A keel is a large, fin-like part of the boat that protrudes from its base.

"That would have stabilised the vessel, they would have been able to traverse the storm and continue their cruise in comfort," he said.

Rescuers instead found the wreckage of the Bayesian 50 metres underwater with its almost 10-metre-long keel raised .

Had it been deployed, it could have helped counter the wind buffeting the Bayesian’s 75-metre high aluminium mast and kept the ship stable. But without it, experts told the newspaper La Repubblica that gusts of 100 kilometres an hour (62mph) would have been enough to capsize the ship – and Monday’s storm far exceeded that.

“The Bayesian was a model for many other vessels because of its stability and exceptionally high performance,” Mr Costantino said. “There was absolutely no problem with it. If water hadn’t surged in, it was unsinkable.”

He told me there were 16 minutes between the power going out on the ship at 03:56 – showing that water was flooding areas with electrical circuits – and the GPS signal being lost, indicating the moment it sank.

That period, along with any measures taken to mitigate the extreme weather, will be pored over by investigators, particularly once they locate the vessel’s black box recorder.

Rino Casilli, one of Sicily’s top ship surveyors, similarly believes that errors may have made the yacht vulnerable to the extreme weather.

“There should have been two members of the crew taking turns to be on watch overnight, given the storm warning,” he told me as he took me out on his boat – around a third of the size of the Bayesian. “And it should have been moored in the harbour, not out at sea.”

Prosecutors say they believe one person was on watch in the cockpit that night.

From Casilli's sailing boat, we gained rare access to the spot where the Bayesian went down.

Around us, an Italian police vessel circulated, warning us back. Suddenly, there was a flurry of activity among divers, as other rescue vessels arrived.

We didn’t know at the time – but they had just located more bodies.

It was an intensely challenging operation for the teams to recover those trapped in the wreckage. Given its depth, at 50 metres underwater, each diver was allowed 10 minutes down before resurfacing for their safety – 120 dives in total. They were assisted by remote control vehicles that could operate on the seabed for far longer.

In this weekend’s press conference, rescuers said the passengers trapped inside during the sinking took refuge in cabins on the ship’s left side, where the last air bubbles formed.

Five of the bodies were found in the first cabin on the left, they said, while the last body – confirmed as Hannah Lynch – was in the third cabin on the left side.

Access for the emergency teams was extremely difficult since the yacht remained largely intact with its furniture obstructing entry.

The coastguard compared it to an “18-storey building full of water”. When Ms Lynch’s body was brought ashore emergency workers on the port applauded their colleagues.

All seven of the dead have been transported to a mortuary for post-mortems.

Rescuers will now need to decide whether – and how – to salvage the wreckage, which would undoubtedly offer vital clues as to what happened. But bringing the Bayesian to the surface could take six to eight weeks and cost 15 million euros (£12.7m) by some estimates.

The hunt for clarity

While the divers’ painstaking work to recover the dead has ended, the investigators’ painful hunt for answers has only begun.

They and the survivors are hunkered down in a hotel close to Porticello, which is strictly off-limits to journalists. Security guards promptly asked us to leave.

Solving the enigma of what happened to the Bayesian will be crucial not only to help loved ones of the victims reach some sort of closure, but also for the maritime industry to draw conclusions.

The brother of James Cutfield, the captain, said he was a “well-respected” sailor who had worked on boats his whole life. Did the experienced sailor somehow make a series of catastrophic errors? The trade union Nautilus, which represents seafarers and captains, called for restraint in passing judgement on the Bayesian’s crew.

"Any attempt to question their conduct without the full facts is not only unfair but also harmful to the process of uncovering the truth and learning any lessons from this tragedy," it said.

The world’s media has begun to leave Porticello, which is gradually returning to the tranquillity of its pre-Bayesian era. Stray cats roam among the old fishing boats, and children play as their families eat out at the few seaside restaurants.

But what has happened over the past week has stunned and scarred many here.

“Last Sunday night, we saw the end of the world in Porticello,” said resident Maria Vizzo. “We’ve never seen something like this. Everyone here is shocked – and everyone is crying.”

Tributes to 'brilliant' Mike and Hannah Lynch as family speak of shock

Bayesian sinking: the key questions for investigators, manslaughter considered by sicily yacht sinking investigators, five things we learned from sicily yacht press conference.

‘Below Deck’ Accused of Covering Up Gary King’s Sexual Misconduct

By Krystie Lee Yandoli

Krystie Lee Yandoli

Bravo ’s Below Deck was recently lauded for its handling of sexual misconduct when a producer on Below Deck Down Under broke the “fourth wall” and intervened when one cast member, Luke Jones, tried to get into bed naked with another cast member, Margot Sisson, without her consent while she was inebriated and passed out. Not only was Luke fired from the show, but their fellow cast member and stewardess, Laura Bileskalne, was also let go because of victim-blaming comments she made to Margot about the incident and her own line-crossing pursuit of deckhand Adam Kodra.

While viewers and fans of the show applauded the pivotal on-screen moment, production crew members who have worked on the popular, Emmy-nominated franchise say they’ve experienced and witnessed sexual harassment and misconduct from other cast members behind the scenes without seeing any real accountability. 

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Suarez says she met King for the first time when the cast and crew arrived in Sardinia in preparation to film the fourth season. Crew members stayed in the same hotel, the DoubleTree by Hilton Olbia-Sardinia, for the whole duration of filming. Cast members joined them and stayed in the same hotel prior to filming charters on the yacht  and on the few “dark days” during the season when no one in production or the cast worked.

One “dark day” in July when the cast members were staying at the hotel, Suarez accompanied an inebriated King back to his hotel room after he filmed his interviews for the show, where she says producers provided him with a substantial amount of alcohol.

“There is no limit to alcohol consumption whatsoever, which I think poses a really big problem,” she says.

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Suarez says when King asked her not to leave she joked with him that she would sit outside of his door to make sure he wouldn’t leave his hotel room. According to Suarez, King then suggested she get in bed with him and repeatedly asked her not to leave his room even though she says he was aware that she was in a relationship with someone else. After a few minutes, she insisted she had to leave and help other cast members, telling King she would return later to drop off snacks and water. She says when she went back to King’s room with a case of water bottles and a bag of snacks, she knocked on the door and King answered the door in his underwear. She says she asked King to take the case of water out of her hands and he continued to ask her not to leave his hotel room.

“I was like, ‘I have to go — I need to go bring other people water and food,’ and he’s like, ‘No, no, please,’” Suarez says. “So I stepped into the room to set the case of waters down and again, he’s repeating, ‘Don’t leave,’ and I was like, ‘I have to go, I’m not staying.’”

“At that point, I didn’t know what was going to happen. I was freaking out,” Suarez says. “It just happened so fast.”

In that same moment, Suarez says she received a phone call from the talent manager and answered it. She says that’s when King let go of the door and she stepped into the hallway to take the call.

“I’m freaking out, and he goes, ‘What’s wrong? What’s going on?’ And I’m like, ‘Just leave me alone.’ He tried to come up behind me and put his arm around me. He’s in the hallway in his underwear and it’s all weird and fucked up, and so I’m just like, ‘Just go back in your room and don’t come out.’”

“I’m freaking out, and he goes, ‘What’s wrong? What’s going on?’ And I’m like, ‘Just leave me alone.’“

Suarez says she immediately told producers what happened following the incident when she saw them in the production office. The next day, she says a co-executive producer reached out to her and they had a conversation about what happened. After Suarez spoke with the co-executive producer she says she had another meeting with him, executive producers Courtland Cox and Vivian Choi, as well as the show’s talent manager. She says she told the producers she didn’t feel comfortable being around King, she didn’t want to do his hair or makeup, and she didn’t want to be alone with him or in the same room as him. She says Cox apologized to her and said the producers would have a conversation with King, assuring Suarez that King would be fired from the show if any other incidents occurred. She says the next day producers removed King from the hotel where the rest of the cast and crew members were staying and for the rest of the “dark days” during filming, he was instructed to sleep on the boat.

“It pretty much sucked from there on out,” Suarez says. “I was just in a super depressive state.”

King declined to comment for this story. A spokesperson for Bravo told Rolling Stone in a statement, “Bravo is committed to maintaining a safe and respectful workplace for cast and crew on our reality shows. We require our third-party production companies to have appropriate workplace policies and trainings in place and a clear process on how to report concerns.  The concerns Ms. Suarez raised in July 2022 were investigated at that time and action was taken based on the findings.”

“With any complaint filed, a timely investigation is launched and, based on the findings, appropriate actions are implemented to ensure the safety of our cast and crew, up to and including termination. With regard to the incident reported by Ms. Suarez involving Mr. King, the case was investigated and reviewed as soon as it was submitted, and production acted accordingly based on the results.”

According to Saurez, she stayed inside her hotel room for a week following the incident with King and didn’t immediately return to work because she says she was upset, depressed, and her mental health declined; she says she even debated going home and not finishing out the rest of the season.

At the time, Suarez also reached out to Zach Klein, the COO of 51 Minds Entertainment, to report the incident. In emails reviewed by Rolling Stone , Suarez detailed the incident to Klein and wrote: 

“[King] comes up behind me, puts his arms around me, holds me against his body, physically restraining me from leaving, and says stuff like no don’t go. I get out of his grip, tell him again that I have to leave, that I am not staying, and I go reach for the door knob and he comes over and puts both his hands on the door, with his whole weight, to push it shut. This whole time he’s laughing. I ask him to please let me out of the room, that I have to go. I then get a phone call from [the talent manager]. He sees and hears that I answer and he finally moves away from the door, allowing me to open it. I step outside, not even able to listen to what [the talent manager] is saying to me because I’m so overwhelmed at that point, and Gary grabs his room key, comes out of his room, again, is only in his underwear, letting the door close behind him.”

After emailing Klein, emails reviewed by Rolling Stone confirm that an HR representative for Banijay America, the parent company of 51 Minds, reached out to Suarez and asked her to have a conversation. Suarez says she spoke to the HR representative who then arranged for her to speak with a counselor. Suarez says the HR representative stayed in touch with her for the remainder of the season and told her the company was conducting an investigation into the incident; at one point, Suarez says the representative told her she spoke to other crew members and to King about what allegedly happened.

Later in the season, Suarez says the HR representative also asked her not to talk about the incident with other production staffers because “it was becoming water cooler talk” on set and it seemed like Suarez was “trying to rally the troops” against the show. Saurez says she wasn’t even alongside her fellow crew members in the week following the incident but because of her absence, people reached out to her and asked her why she wasn’t on set. Suarez says she told the HR representative that she explained what happened to the people who reached out to her and asked for clarification about whether or not she was “allowed” to talk about the incident with her colleagues. Suarez says the rep told her yes, she was allowed to, but discouraged her from doing it.

In later conversations, Suarez says she expressed to executive producers that she was upset about how the situation was addressed. She says executive producers responded by saying they originally offered to fire King from the show when the alleged incident happened. Suarez says she wanted leadership to make that decision based on the information they had and not put the responsibility on her to say whether or not she wanted King fired, especially since she didn’t actually have the power to enforce that decision. After the incident, Suarez says she only saw King in passing a couple of times around the hotel but that they never directly interacted or communicated.

“He’s next-level scary with women,” they say. 

Three other people who did not work for 51 Minds Entertainment, NBC, or Below Deck spoke to Rolling Stone and say that Suarez told them about the alleged incident with King at the time.

Another crew member who requested anonymity out of fear of repercussions tells Rolling Stone later in this same season, they witnessed King grab a female cast member’s butt and continue to touch her inappropriately even though she said, “No,” and told him to stop. While filming at a beach club in Sardinia, the crew member says King was inebriated and they also witnessed King grab another production crew member’s genitals. During off days in between charters, Below Deck typically films cast members partying on and off the boat in their free time. It’s common to see cast members drunk and engage in sexual activity with one another on camera. 

The crew member says they reported the issue on their walkie talkie, which they use to communicate with the executive producer, director, and other people working in the control room. According to production crew members, there’s a control room set up in one of the guest rooms on the boat where producers monitor live footage. When they’re filming on location off the boat, they set up an area nearby that acts as a control room.

“The girl was literally saying, ‘No, stop, don’t,’” the crew member says. “I’m explaining this over my walkie and no one’s acknowledging it.”

“The girl was literally saying, ‘No, stop, don’t.’ I’m explaining this over my walkie and no one’s acknowledging it.“

They say a producer eventually approached King and told him to stop. After the producer spoke to him, the crew member says King walked over to a camera operator who was on a break and grabbed his genitals. 

The crew member says these incidents were filmed but didn’t air on television. They say they’re not sure what happened to the footage of King’s alleged behavior or other footage that the production company doesn’t end up using for TV. Typically, the crew member says, producers and editors have access to raw footage filmed in the field at least until the editing stage.

“I had to promote and make this guy who just assaulted someone look awesome,” they say. “That was my job, to make this person look cool, capable, and exciting.” 

The production crew member says after they were vocal about witnessing King’s alleged harassment on set throughout filming, they were not asked to return to the show after working for different iterations of the Below Deck franchise for years. Suarez also says she thinks she was retaliated against for reporting King’s behavior to the production company and that’s why she wasn’t asked to return to the show. Suarez says while King got to stay on Below Deck without consequences, she lost the opportunity to work after reporting the alleged misconduct. For Suarez, there wasn’t enough done to remove King from the show or hold him accountable after he allegedly exhibited inappropriate behavior toward her and other women.

“You’re an executive producer on the show and you’re not even worried that your cast member put his hands on me and is being a creep currently while being on TV?” Suarez says. “Somebody shouldn’t be able to keep a platform for being a gross creep.”

Productions’ handling of the incident with King exhibited a pattern to Suarez who says she told a producer about a separate incident that allegedly occurred when she filmed Below Deck Season 10. She says she was put in charge of accompanying the male cast members from a car to their hotel and bosun Ross McHarg made her feel uncomfortable.

“He was just making these weird, lewd, sexual, gross comments toward me to the point where the other boys in the car were like, ‘Shut up Ross, why are you saying these things to her?’” Suarez says. “There was stuff like that that I expressed to production as well and, you know, nothing happened thereafter.” (McHarg did not respond to requests for comment.)

According to Suarez and three other staffers who worked in production for Below Deck , someone from HR delivers a sexual harassment and cultural sensitivity training before each season. Producers also allegedly tell staffers if something goes awry during filming to communicate it on their walkie talkies and someone in the control room will respond. At the beginning of the season, crew members say they’re also explicitly told not to break the “fourth wall” and interact with cast members under any circumstances.

“For a show like this where there is alcohol and sex involved, I think there should be an intimacy coordinator-type position on these shows or something like that,” one crew member says. “There should be some accountability and some standardization practice where it’s not just up to some dude [in the control room] who has been producing television for 20 years.”

Inspired by the SAG strike, former Real Housewives of New York star Bethenny Frankel has been vocal about what she calls the mistreatment of reality stars by networks and her desire for talent to unionize for better protections. Earlier in August, lawyers on behalf of a handful of unnamed reality stars sent a letter to NBCUniversal accusing the company of manipulation, covering up instances of sexual violence, and other claims regarding their reality shows. The purpose of the letter was to ask NBCUniversal to hold possible evidence ahead of litigation.

Suarez also thinks there should be protocols for crew members to follow when they witness or experience sexual harassment or misconduct from a cast member or anyone else on set.

“Why can’t you just get on TV and be like, ‘Gary had to be removed from the show for his misconduct?’ If anything, that would make me respect the producers and the show and everything a lot more if they were just honest instead of trying to sweep things under the rug, which is what feels like happened.”

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Rolling Stone is a part of Penske Media Corporation. © 2024 Rolling Stone, LLC. All rights reserved.

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Open Water 2: Adrift

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Open water 2 : adrift, open water 2: adrift.

Directed by Hans Horn

Fatigue. Hypothermia. Death.

A weekend cruise on a luxurious party yacht goes horribly wrong for a group of old high-school friends when they get stuck in the water many miles from shore and a happy reunion turns into a fight for survival.

Susan May Pratt Eric Dane Richard Speight Jr. Niklaus Lange Ali Hillis Cameron Richardson

Director Director

Producers producers.

Dan Maag Philip Schulz-Deyle Hendrik Holler

Writers Writers

Adam Kreutner David Mitchell

Original Writer Original Writer

Kôji Suzuki

Casting Casting

Nancy Nayor Kelly Wagner

Editor Editor

Christian Lonk

Cinematography Cinematography

Bernhard Jasper

Assistant Director Asst. Director

Hendrik Holler

Executive Producer Exec. Producer

Stephan Barth

Production Design Production Design

Visual effects visual effects.

Sebastian Faber

Stunts Stunts

Wolfgang Raach

Composer Composer

Gerd Baumann

Sound Sound

Alexander Buck Emil Klotzsch Guido Zettier

Peter Rommel Productions Orange Pictures UFA Shotgun Pictures

Germany USA

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German French Spanish English

Releases by Date

10 jul 2006, 03 aug 2006, 09 aug 2006, 10 aug 2006, 18 aug 2006, 07 sep 2006, 28 sep 2006, 20 feb 2007, 27 jun 2007, 28 jul 2007, 28 feb 2007, 02 sep 2008, releases by country.

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Review by soupydoupyy ★★ 7

About 4 years ago I ran into my Aunt Linda at a family event. Naturally, I made the conversation about movies. "Have you seen any good ones lately?", I asked. Immediately she told me of a movie about people trapped in the ocean because they forgot to put the ladder down of their yacht. "It's a sequel to a big movie, but it doesn't really have anything to do with the first one", she said....."That's a good sign", I thought as I rolled my eyes. "Is it Open Water 2?" "Yes! You NEED TO SEE IT!" I said I would try and see it, without really wanting to. As the years went by my Aunt Linda would ask if I…

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There is nothing terrifying about a bunch of idiots dying in the ocean merely because they are stupid.

Review by Blaze the Action Junkie ★★½

Promotions claim this film is based on actual events. This is false according to Google. The actual script is an adaptation of Koji Suzuki's short story Adrift, a piece of fiction. It matters little to me, most of the film's stress is centered on a mother stuck in the water just out of reach of her screaming baby, and true or not that made for a bit of a cringe-fest. I don't think I'd call the film bad for that fact, just kind of grating in a stressful thriller aspect. The acting and tension were solid for what the film is, but I thought the characters left a lot to be desired with how they were written in this one. The situation was also kind of dumb, as was the ending. Maybe if they had added sharks to the movie it could have been better..

2006 Ranked 2000’s Ranked Horror Ranked Horror in the 2000’s Ranked Open Sea Ranked

Review by ✯ Miloš⑬ 💀↯ ★★★★

It's about a group of friends jumping into the water from their boat, forgetting to lower the ladder, realizing they're too far up, and getting stuck in the water many miles from shore.

I get that people found the characters annoying, but honestly, the idea of the movie is pretty exciting to see what will happen. I enjoy the atmosphere and the mid-2000s film editing, with the ending giving me goosebumps. It took me a moment to realize that the driver was played by Eric Dane, lol.

Overall, I think it's an exciting horror/thriller without any sharks, with solid acting and tons of enjoyable moments.

Review by mikey v ★★★

these type of movies r all i want to watch now they all suck so much i love it

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Open Water 2: Adrift

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Richard Speight Jr.

Niklaus Lange

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Adrift (2006)

Adrift is a 2006 survival thriller film directed by Hans Horn. The film was inspired by a short story of the same name by Japanese author Koji Suzuki, from which it took its title, but its promotional material claimed the film was based on actual events.

The film is about a group of friends who go on a boating holiday, only to find themselves trapped in the ocean next to their yacht, unable to climb back aboard as they forgot to put the boarding ladder down. They spend their time alternating between bickering and trying to look for a solution before they all drown.

Due to its similar plot to the movie Open Water , the film was marketed under the title Open Water 2: Adrift in some countries to capitalize on the original's success, although the productions are not related . The movie later received a Portuguese remake in 2016 under the name Perdidos .

This film provides examples of:

• Didn't Think This Through : Yes , jumping off a boat while the boat does not have a bolt in ladder will backfire hard .
• Bittersweet Ending : The Portuguese ending is far more logical than the 2006 film: Ana (Amy's Portuguese counterpart) and her son (Sarah's Portuguese counter part) end up being the only survivors of the trip and they both are saved by a fisherman, but it's clear that Ana, while happy to be reunited with her son, is very much in a bad state of mind after what happened .
• Improbable Infant Survival : Played with and seemed unlikely, but baby Sarah does survive by the end of it and found by some fishermen, although crying either out of hunger or being left alone again due to her mother leaving her and undergoing an implied Gainax Ending .
• Karma Houdini : Dan is a Jerkass who grabs aquaphobic Amy and jumps with her into the water (thus kicking off the ordeal), pops Michelle's dolphin floatie, botches the swimsuit-rope attempt and ends up mortally wounding Zach trying to protect a boat he lied about owning. Naturally he survives, and only after an 11th hour suicide attempt where Amy has to face her worst fear just to rescue him.
• In Name Only : Adrift was rebranded, post-production, as Open Water 2: Adrift to cash in on the original's popularity. It in turn was followed by another unofficial sequel, Open Water 3 .
• Last Grasp at Life : As seen in the poster.
• Mr. Fanservice : At one point the characters in Adrift remove their swimwear to fashion a crude rope. Lots of male nudity ensues.
• No Antagonist : Given the film's nature as a Dolled-Up Installment of Open Water , one might be expecting sharks or something similarly scary to show up and menace the protagonists. Nope, it's just them being trapped on the open sea and not being able to get back on their boat or get help in time. Although there's a false alarm at least once, the real threat isn't something trying to eat them but drowning.
• Only Sane Man : James is the only one who doesn't act like a complete idiot at some point, having gone into the water after friends. He later tries to break off a piece of the propeller to use that and the knife to get back up on the boat. He ends up fracturing his skull, which sadly brings him down to everyone else's intelligence level before ultimately killing him.
• Threatening Shark : Actually averted as they don't encounter any sharks, although there is still tension due to the possibility that one will show up, which leads to a Jump Scare .
• All the characters in Adrift , especially the idiot who grabbed the woman who was afraid of water and jumped in without putting the ladder down first. Some of the others (James, Lauren) could be excused because there were other people on the boat when they went into the water.
• And when they're actually in the water, not one of them considers the obvious solution: Lift one of the smaller, lighter women up onto the boat and have them lower the ladder. Dan and Amy do eventually do this, but it's the last plan that they come up with as opposed to the first.
• The Unreveal : We never learn what happened to Lauren after she swam away.
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Product Description

When a group of friends fail to lower the ladder of their boat, they find themselves stranded in the surrounding waters and struggle to survive.

Product details

• Aspect Ratio ‏ : ‎ 2.35:1
• Is Discontinued By Manufacturer ‏ : ‎ No
• MPAA rating ‏ : ‎ R (Restricted)
• Product Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 0.7 x 7.5 x 5.4 inches; 2.72 ounces
• Item model number ‏ : ‎ LGT20919DVD
• Director ‏ : ‎ Hans Horn
• Media Format ‏ : ‎ Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen, Multiple Formats, Dolby, Subtitled, NTSC
• Run time ‏ : ‎ 1 hour and 34 minutes
• Release date ‏ : ‎ February 20, 2007
• Actors ‏ : ‎ Susan May Pratt, Richard Speight Jr., Niklaus Lange, Ali Hillis, Cameron Richardson
• Subtitles: ‏ : ‎ English, Spanish
• Language ‏ : ‎ English (Dolby Digital 2.0), English (Dolby Digital 5.1)
• Studio ‏ : ‎ Lionsgate
• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B000LC3IE2
• Writers ‏ : ‎ Adam Kreutner, Collin McMahon, David Mitchell, Richard Speight Jr.
• Country of Origin ‏ : ‎ USA
• Number of discs ‏ : ‎ 1
• #2,211 in Horror (Movies & TV)
• #2,938 in Mystery & Thrillers (Movies & TV)
• #9,489 in Drama DVDs

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Eye For Film >> Movies >> Adrift (2006) Film Review

Reviewed by: Jennie Kermode

When one reveals that one works as a film critic, people always say that it must be a wonderful job. Sometimes it's more of a public service. People like me go to see films like Adrift so that people like you don't have to.

Adrift is the story of a group of six former college friends who meet up to celebrate a birthday aboard a luxury yacht. Some miles out into the ocean, four of them decide to go for a swim. Young mother Amy declines, terrified of water after a traumatic incident in her childhood. In an attempt to cure her fear, loudmouth Zach grabs hold of her and dives overboard with her. As he forgets to let down the ladder before doing so, the six then find themselves stranded in the water, unable to get back aboard. And that's pretty much it.

With so many characters, we know from the start that they're not all going to make it, but the ways in which they manage to come to grief are almost as ridiculous as their inability to use the many simple methods available for regaining access to the boat (it would help if they were a little less stupid - letting the heaviest guy climb up something which he's already torn once is really imbecilic, as is throwing things away when they fail to be of use on the first attempt). One of them gives up and swims away, looking for help, much like several of the critics in my press screening. One cannot help but long for them to hurry up and drown and get it over with.

Aiming to fill the 90 odd minutes which will make this (at least look like) a feature film, the scriptwriters have the stranded characters engage in what might have been supposed to be soul-searching discussion, with awkward revelations and macho stand-offs aplenty, yet despite this almost all the characters are underdeveloped. Only Susan May Pratt convinces, as Amy, though Ali Hillis works impressively hard with the fewest lines of all. Cameron Richardson's Michelle is never allowed to be anything more than a dumb blonde, giving the impression that even the writers don't care about these people. It's difficult for anyone else to care when they do nothing but whine and pointlessly make their situation worse. If you can't find anything better to do with an hour and a half than watch this film, you might as well go and drown yourself.

Read more Adrift reviews:

Director: Hans Horn

Writer: Adam Kreutner, Collin McMahon

Starring: Susan May Pratt, Richard Speight Jr., Niklaus Lange, Ali Hills, Cameron Richardson, Eric Dane, Mattea Gabarretta

Runtime: 95 minutes

Country: Germany

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How original horror movie adrift became open water 2.

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Here’s how the original (and unrelated) horror movie Adrift became Open Water 2 . Back in 2003, a little movie called Open Water made a big splash at the box office. Helmed by married filmmaking duo Chris Kentis and Laura Lau, the movie followed an ill-fated couple (played by Blanchard Ryan and Daniel Travis) on a scuba diving trip who are accidentally left behind by their tour boat and find themselves at the mercy of the elements and a school of hungry sharks.

Self-financed by Kentis and Lau with a shoestring budget of $120,000, Open Water was a surprise box office hit that banked over $55 million worldwide and earned rave reviews for its minimalist approach and pervasive sense of dread. In 2006 the indie hit was joined by Open Water 2: Adrift , directed by German filmmaker Hans Horn. It shared a similar premise with Kentis and Lau’s movie, following a group stranded at sea, and was –for all intents and purposes – a sequel .

Related: Open Water & The Reef Prove Shark Movies Are Scariest Without CGI

Open Water 2: Adrift was in fact a sequel in name only. According to Indie London , director Hans Horn came up with the idea for the movie -originally titled just Adrift -  a few years before Open Water was even released but struggled to find a studio willing to back his project until Kentis and Lau’s film was a hit. To further capitalize on Open Water’s success, the film was marketed as Open Water 2: Adrift in many regions, although it was released under its original title in some countries including Australia and the UK.

The marketing ploy didn’t really work, however, with the supposed sequel earning just a fraction of Open Water’s box office takings and not much in the way of raves either. To be fair, Open Water 2: Adrift is a decent psychological horror that works perfectly well as a standalone movie. Beyond the stranded-at-sea narrative, it has little in common with Open Water , focusing instead on a group of friends vacationing aboard a yacht who find themselves in a sticky situation when they forget to lower the boat’s ladder after going swimming, leaving them stuck in the ocean. While there aren’t any sharks, the infant daughter of two of the friends is left alone aboard the boat, which gives the movie its own unique element of terror and tension.

The faux-franchise didn’t end with Open Water 2: Adrift either. In 2017, Australian director Gerald Rascionato released his feature debut Open Water 3: Cage Dive which follows three friends shark cage diving who find themselves stranded at sea when their boat capsizes. Like Open Water 2: Adrift before it, the movie has no connection to the original Open Water movie but was sold as a sequel in certain territories. Open Water 3: Cage Dive does, at least, have sharks .

Next: Jaws: How A Malfunctioning Shark Created A Classic Horror Movie Technique

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41 Days Stranded at Sea: The Harrowing, Heartbreaking Real-Life Story Behind New Movie 'Adrift'

"It's amazing what you can do when you have to survive," says shipwreck survivor Tami Oldham Ashcraft

Spoiler Alert! This story contains major spoilers about the plot of the new movie Adrift .

The summer of 1983 started out like a fairytale adventure for 23-year-old globetrotter Tami Oldham Ashcraft.

The California native got engaged to her British boyfriend, Richard Sharp, and several months later the two experienced sailors set out on a dream trip from Tahiti to San Diego on a luxurious 44-foot sailboat. Less than two weeks into their trek, the pair — played by Shailene Woodley and Sam Claflin in the new movie Adrift — were trapped in a devastatingly strong hurricane that changed their lives forever.

Ashcraft, who originally detailed her ordeal in a 1998 self-published memoir Red Sky in Mourning , says that although she and Sharp received radio warnings about the developing storm, which started out as a tropical depression and quickly gained in intensity and speed, they were unable to outrun it.

“We ran from it for three days trying to figure it out, because it kept changing direction,” Ashcraft recalls to PEOPLE. “The storms are going twice your speed. We couldn’t make that kind of time with the boat to get out of the way.”

When the hurricane fully descended upon them on Oct. 12, Sharp had sent Ashcraft below deck to rest. The last thing she remembers before the boat capsized and she was knocked unconscious is her fiancé screaming.

“When I woke up from being knocked out for 27 hours, I didn’t know where I was,” she recalls. “I was like, ‘Where am I?’ The boat’s half-full of water at that point, I couldn’t even really remember anything. Then I started moving and unlatching myself [from her safety suit and various debris], looking around going, ‘Oh my God. Richard. Where’s Richard?'”

All she could find of Sharp in the midst of the wreckage was his broken safety tether hanging lifelessly over the boat. While the reality of her grave situation swept over her, so did the awareness that she was badly injured — her head was split open behind her hairline and she had a serious gash on her leg — and drifting aimlessly somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

“They were both bad. My head injury I could keep clean somewhat, keep bandages on it,” says Ashcraft. “Thank goodness it’s underneath my hairline so you can’t see it. It splayed my head wide open, and I just bled. My leg I kept hitting on everything, and then there was so much water in the boat. It would just stay wet all the time. I was super worried about my leg. Then I started ripping up t-shirts and stuff when I ran out of bandages.”

After she self-administered first aid, Ashcraft’s next key survival move was crafting a makeshift sail from some of the debris on the boat and setting course for Hawaii — 1,500 miles away — which she was able to do via her navigation skills.

“What saved my life was knowing celestial navigation, that I could navigate by the sun and get myself somewhere,” Ashcraft says. “You have to do three sights a day, and sometimes I would have to do four. Doing all the mathematics required for that really helped me to focus.”

RELATED VIDEO: Two American Women and Their Dogs Rescued After Five ‘Hopeless’ Months Lost At Sea

It also helped keep her mind off her grief over losing her fiancé in such a tragic way.

“I had to tell myself onboard that I couldn’t cry anymore, because I was losing way too much water,” Ashcraft says. “My water supply was very limited. I just had a big talk with myself. That inner strength to survive is so strong. You just don’t realize it, until you’re put in a really crucial time that you have to survive. It’s amazing what you can do. That just comes from within really. Then keeping your mind active.”

Ashcraft survived 41 days adrift in the Pacific, subsisting on peanut butter and willpower, before she approached Hilo, Hawaii and was picked up by a Japanese research vessel after sending up a flare around 4 o’clock in the morning.

The ship’s crew members “were shocked,” she recalls. “I was exhausted. I was way underweight — I’m 5’8″-5’9″ and I weighed about 100 lbs. I didn’t even go to the hospital. Can you believe that? I can’t believe nobody sent me to the hospital.”

When Ashcraft returned home to San Diego, the weight of her near-death experience and the loss of her first love fully set in, and she face a long recovery from her injuries, physically and mentally.

“I had the head injury and I couldn’t even read a book for nearly five years. I couldn’t finish sentences, my short term memory was really bad,” she says. “Seeing couples together, that sort of thing, was hard. I had nightmares. I was consumed for years and years with thinking about it. I then realized after five or six years that I could choose when to start thinking about him and the experience. I started realizing, ‘Oh, I’m not consumed by this all day now.'”

Although Ashcraft says her physical injuries healed well enough that she never went to a hospital for medical attention, she regrets not seeking out help from a therapist or counselor.

“I wish I had gotten some professional mental help. I think I could have sped up my recovery a little bit more,” she says. “Not so much the grieving but the mental recovery of reading and that kind of thing. They can give you projects to work on and things, and also just make sure that you’re going around the right track.”

Ashcraft says it took her a full five years before she was able to come out of her mental fog and feel joy again. She returned to the water almost immediately — only these days she prefers power boating to sailing when she navigates near Washington’s San Juan Islands, where she lives with her family, husband Ed, a contractor, and her two daughters.

“We’ve been a boating family,” she says. “I think it teaches the children so much more about life.”

Ashcraft still speaks publicly about her incredible survival story to groups like the Navy Survival School. “I’m glad to help, although I’m sorry I was in that situation. Now I choose when I want to think about it. For many years I was consumed by it and a lot of that had to do with just moving on in life,” she says. “It’s still in your heart. It’s just in a different way.”

Adrift is now playing in theaters.

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