Mick Dolman

When we got these storms from the Great Southern Ocean, they were in constant fear.

Because when the wave picked you up and took you right up to the top of the wave, it would then bring you back down and smash you into the trough of the wave.

All of this is in complete darkness.

You cannot see a thing.

So you've got 10 blokes.

You just headbutton each other, smashing into each other because there's nothing inside the life raft that you can grab onto and give you something to stop you from throwing around the whole raft.

So this was constant.

And in amongst all that...

you've got a plastic bucket bailing water out of the raft, which is getting full every time.

There's screams and it was an absolute madhouse and so fearful.

It was bloody awful.

No, no, I was still in my jocks.

One of the crew said to the captain, he had a jacket and it was pretty well spurred, said, why don't you give the bucko your jacket?

He just didn't answer.

And so I didn't get it.

And what, you know, the biggest fear for us during those storms...

was the bottom of the raft falling off.

People coming up and down, that the arse of the raft falls to pieces and then everybody just gets spilled over into the ocean.

diminishing.

But Ken is a guy that kept raising the importance of doing things in the raft, making sure that we're as seaworthy as we possibly can, making good use of what resources we have, which weren't many at all.