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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
During our lifetime, most of us will, at some stage or another, find ourselves in stressful situations. Situations that are sometimes out of our control. However, with any luck, these situations, although stressful, won't be life-threatening. But what if they are? What if you find yourself in a literal life-and-death situation? How would you react?
In this series, we'll hear firsthand accounts from people who have found themselves in such situations. Moments in time where their life was literally on the line.
And once I look up again, that's when I can see two parachutes. Because with the two parachutes tangled, it just leaves us shaking.
Whether it was a situation they put themselves in... To me, it seemed impossible that we would survive the day. Let alone what was to come.
Or just simply, wrong place, wrong time.
And I burst out laughing. I mean, I was probably close to fairly uncontrollable hysterics. I said, I haven't got a gun. You've got all the guns around here. And he said, kneel here.
We'll hear the incredible survival stories, but also look at the after. How do you pick yourself up and move on with your life? You've got to get back on an aeroplane. I mean, that must just be terrifying.
You know, they never got over it. They never got over it. What did happen?
My name's Jack Lawrence. Welcome to What I Survived.
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Chapter 2: What led the Robertson family to embark on their sailing adventure?
Why? Why? Well, nine sailors started the race. Four retired before leaving the Atlantic Ocean. Of the five remaining, Che Blythe, who had set off with absolutely no sailing experience, would sail past the Cape of Good Hope before retiring. Nigel Tetley would sink with 1,100 nautical miles to go, or 2,000 kilometres.
And in the lead, Donald Crowhurst, who, in desperation, attempted to fake a round-the-world voyage to avoid financial ruin, would begin to show signs of mental illness and would, in fact, sadly, commit suicide.
Bernard Mortissier, who rejected the philosophy behind a commercial competition, in fact, abandoned the race while in a strong position to win and would keep sailing non-stop until he reached Tahiti after circling the globe one and a half times.
This would leave Robin Knox Johnston as the only entrant to complete the race and thus becoming the first man to sail single-handed and non-stop around the world. Now known as Sir Robin Knox Johnston, Douglas says he was the inspiration that sparked this adventure.
It's his fault, basically. And I did tell him many years later when I met him that it was your fault that we sailed around the world. Because he was on the news, on the radio, and Dougal, my dad, began to explain to us what it was like to be at sea and to be sailing and to be sailing a yacht and how tough it would be, a single-handed sailboat.
how they would manage to do that and how they got around the world, you know, how they navigated to get around the world. So we followed them on the radio. We followed their progress on the radio until eventually Robin Knox-Johnson won. And it crossed the finish line.
And the cannon is gone. The cannon has gone. The hoodoos, the horns, the salute. Day 312, about 25 past 3 on April the 22nd, and Robin Knox-Johnson and Sue Haley have sailed non-stop around the world.
It was all adventure to us. We thought it was great, you know, these sort of dynamics going on. And it was my brother Neil who said, Daddy, you're a sailor. Why don't we sail around the world? Now, kids should be careful about what they say, you know. I think they say out of the mouths of babies and sucklings. Somehow that sparked the idea in Dougal's head.
And talk switched from the yacht race regularly, because the yacht race was now over, to a possible... trip of our own around the world, you know. And talk became of little else than us sailing around the world. The more we talked about it, the less fantasy and the more sort of planning it got, you know. And what's the point of having a plan if you're not going to actually do something?
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Chapter 3: How did the family prepare for their journey on the Lucette?
Dougal never truly understood money or how it works. So when you're talking about planning, you talk about a budget, wouldn't you? You know, you'd think, well, you need a budget for this. We had no budget. We had no budget. We were going to sell the farm for a lot of money, buy a yacht for not so much money as we sold the farm for.
And with the difference, we were going to live off it for the circumnavigation, which could take up to four years. That's it. That was our planning.
I kind of find that, as you said, exciting, though, as well with not having a plan, because I think a lot of people have that fantasy of turning up at the airport and just, you know, randomly going with whatever flight that's there, you know, just not having a plan and just going with it.
But no one's actually got the balls to do it because they're like, well, but what happens if or what if this or what if that? Whereas there seems there was no what ifs. It was just like, ah, we'll work it out.
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I don't know if you ever watched these wild animal programs where you have a lion and a buffalo in the same picture, you know, and the buffalo, like he waits until the lion attacks him before he attacks the lion. It's like he waits right to the last moment. But whilst the lion is there, he just ignores him, you know. And Dougal was very like that. He never...
He's like, oh, there's a lion there. I've got to deal with that. He'd just say, oh, there's a lion over there. If that lion comes over here, I'll just give him a butt and a head. Dougal dealt with things when they slapped him in the face, basically. And somebody with a character like that is the right man for the job because you'd never do it. If you stopped to think, you would never do it.
And back in those days, it was so dangerous. I mean, Sir Francis Chichester, he got a knighthood. Sir Alec Rose got a knighthood. These are people who sailed around the world alone, and they got knighthoods because they were brave. Sir Robin Knox Johnson got a knighthood. Dougal didn't get a knighthood. But I'm just saying, these were great feats of endurance back in those days.
We acquired the Lisette in Malta. My sister Anne and my dad Dougal went to Malta and bought the yacht back to the UK. Now, I have to ask, why did they do that? Why didn't we just go to Malta and sell from Malta? I mean, why the hell did they have to bring the yacht back and then set sail from Falmouth? You know, that is just an amazing story.
logic somewhere in there you know but that's what we did so we bought the yacht back and it was in Falmouth that we met the Icelandic family and the Icelandic family were organized planners and they were doing a trip around the world too but they had a much bigger boat that consumed oil it was a motorboat so they were very restricted in their distances whereas we weren't you know
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