The Rose-Noelle story was a ripper. Three days into its voyage, at 6am on June 4, 1989, a massive wave - so big it roared like a freight train - came out of the darkness and flipped the 6.5 tonne trimaran upside down like a bath toy, trapping the four terrified men in the darkness, sea water pouring in through the open hatch. Advertisement
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"The Rose Noelle: 25 years on, a wife's true story". New Zealand Woman's Weekly. Archived from the original on 2016-08-16. ^ Glennie, John; Phare, Jane (1992).
Four sailors’ survival at sea for 118 days in an upturned trimaran ranks as one of the world’s greatest survival stories--or one of its greatest hoaxes. If the tale is to be believed, the trimaran Rose-Noelle was flipped over on June 4 by a huge wave in a 60-knot gale three days out of New Zealand’s South Island.
When the four desperate survivors of the wreck of the 12.6m Rose-Noelle clawed their way up through steep Great Barrier bush to tell the world they were back, Media clamoured for the story. The TVNZ helicopter jostled for space on the tiny Great Barrier beach against a helicopter hired by the fledgling TV3.
Hellriegel said it was a great help just having the body heat of four people during freezing winter weather. Five or six times they were forced by the weather to stay below for days on end. That’s when spirits sagged and tensions ran high.
Rose-NoëlleHistoryNameRose-NoëlleRoutePicton to TongaFateCapsized at 6am on June 4, 1989 by a rogue wave, drifted for 119 days and sank at Little Waterfall BayGeneral characteristics4 more rows
With no signal from the EPIRB distress beacon, Search and Rescue officials concluded that something "catastrophic" had happened to the yacht. In the New Zealand Water Safety Council's bulletin of Aug/Sept 1989, the four Rose-Noelle crew were listed as "drowned" in the vicinity of the Kermadec Islands.
Television (Trailer and Excerpts) – 2015 TV movie Abandoned follows the true story that swept New Zealand in 1989 — the extraordinary survival of four men after a trimaran capsized in the Pacific Ocean's treacherous swirls.
On board was the boat's owner and skipper, New Zealander John Glennie, an experienced sailor who designed the boat for long-distance cruising; Phillip Hoffman and Rick Hellriegel of New Zealand; and Jim Nalepka, 38, of Minneapolis, Minn., who was in the second of two years as caterer for the Outward Bound program in ...
The 41-foot-long trimaran Rose-Noëlle, which had been lying beam-on to the seas, was engulfed by an avalanche of white water, pitched to 90 degrees then flipped upside down. Inside the yacht it was as if a house had been inverted in an earthquake.
Despite being set at an American university, much of the movie was filmed in Canada at McGill University's McConnell Hall. It is based on the book Adams Fall by Sean Desmond.
Owen BlackAbandoned (2015) - Owen Black as Rick - IMDb.
A psychological thriller about a senior (Katie Holmes) at one of America's most prestigious universities. Under enormous pressure to complete her thesis and earn a top job at one of the world's most competitive consulting firms, Katie is still coping with the sudden unexplained disappearance of her first love two years prior. As the investigation continues, Katie is forced to choose between past passions and new possibilities, even as new facts are uncovered.Abandon / Film synopsis
Abandoned is a 2010 American thriller film directed by Michael Feifer and starring Brittany Murphy, Dean Cain, Mimi Rogers and Jay Pickett. It is distributed by Anchor Bay Entertainment and one of two films released posthumously.
Drifting at sea for a harrowing 119 days, the tale of how the four strangers survived the elements – and each other – has become legendary. Many thought the men had perished, but Karen knew in her heart that her husband was still alive.
While docked behind the Rose Noelle in Picton, the opportunity arose for Phil, who was a builder, to join the boat's captain, John Glennie, on a voyage to Tonga. "Phil was always looking for adventure," Karen explains. "He expressed interest and was soon sailing the seas with John and two men, Rick and Jim, who John found by placing an ad at ...
Karen met Phil when she was 11 years old and growing up in the Auckland suburb of Manurewa. She was immediately drawn to his charm and zest for life. The pair married when Karen was just 17 and they started a family together. By the 90s, they were living on a boat and sailing around New Zealand with their children.
Karen says Phil often spoke about the horrifying experience , and told her that thinking about his family is what kept him alive.
Phil, who had had triple bypass surgery three years earlier, was looking forward to the trip, but three days into the voyage, a huge wave washed over the 12.5m yacht, tipping it upside down and trapping the men inside.
When Karen Hofman lost her husband at sea in 1989, she never lost hope he would return – for better or worse. This video file cannot be played. (Error Code: 102630) Karen Hofman lost her beloved husband once for four long months.
After making it to shore and spending a night in the bush, the men broke into a bach, where they cleaned up, shaved, trimmed their hair, changed into clothes they found and cooked themselves a meal, before sleeping through the night.
The crew from the Rose-Noelle after 119 days at sea. From left: Phillip Hofman, Rick Hellriegel and Jim Nalepka. Photo / Supplied.
Then he and Godinet began searching the shoreline and, donning dive gear, searched the site where the Rose-Noelle had ground itself to death.
The men had lived in a small space inside the wreck, not on top of it. They had rigged up a water catchment system and, after the upturned yacht grew barnacles and became a floating reef, had started to catch fish using a gaff. Glennie had repeatedly dived into the submerged cabin, feeling his way around for the stocks of food he knew were there. Trays of unripe kiwifruit gradually ripened, and rationed out, gave them precious vitamin C.
After clambering ashore and spending a night in the bush, they had broken into a bach on the Barrier, where they had washed, shaved, trimmed their hair, changed into clothes they found in a wardrobe and cooked themselves a meal. And they had slept the night. The next day they heard a phone ringing in a nearby property.
Twenty years later, the three remaining men - Hellreigel died of a brain tumour two years after coming ashore - are still estranged.
The Rose-Noelle story was a ripper. Three days into its voyage, at 6am on June 4, 1989 , a massive wave - so big it roared like a freight train - came out of the darkness and flipped the 6.5 tonne trimaran upside down like a bath toy, trapping the four terrified men in the darkness, sea water pouring in through the open hatch. Advertisement.
In the New Zealand Water Safety Council's bulletin of Aug/Sept 1989, the four Rose-Noelle crew were listed as "drowned" in the vicinity of the Kermadec Islands.
Four sailors’ survival at sea for 118 days in an upturned trimaran ranks as one of the world’s greatest survival stories--or one of its greatest hoaxes. If the tale is to be believed, the trimaran Rose-Noelle was flipped over on June 4 by a huge wave in a 60-knot gale three days out of New Zealand’s South Island. It made land on Sept. 30.
Other points baffling investigators are how two radio messages were supposedly received from the Rose-Noelle by another yacht after the flip and how the Rose-Noelle drifted from 140 miles off the east coast of New Zealand around the top of the island to the west coast.
Skipper John Glennie has signed contracts for his story but the payments are hardly likely to compensate for the $145,000 loss of his 40-foot trimaran, which was smashed to bits on rocks. “All those who think it’s a hoax are bloody idiots,” said crewman Phillip Hofman.
Hellriegel said it was a great help just having the body heat of four people during freezing winter weather.
Glennie dived into the main cabin to retrieve more and more equipment. They had a gas cooker and even rigged up a barbecue on fine days.
Five or six times they were forced by the weather to stay below for days on end. That’s when spirits sagged and tensions ran high.
Other than the undocumented story of a Hong Kong seaman who was reported to have been picked up during World War II after 133 days adrift, it is a record for survival at sea.
The inverted trimaran drifted "all over the place." It is estimated that she covered, ignominiously, a journey of nearly 2,000 miles, during which the cramped crew experienced somewhere between 17-20 gales - an average of one every week! And astonishingly enough, four months after the Royal New Zealand Air Force planes had given up the search for Rose-Noëlle she washed back up unto Great Barrier Island, at the edge of the Hauraki Gulf, the well-populated sailing area of New Zealand. Transcript of hand-written notes that accompanied John Glennie's feedback:
Full trip lines should be kept FAIRLY TAUT so they do not hang down in the sea and foul the rode and parachute.
John sailed it to the Great Barrier Reef, then across the Tasman Sea to New Zealand, where he gained boat-building work at Paremata, working with the brother of New Zealand's America's Cup helmsman, David Barnes. Every cent that he earned went into equipping Rose-Noëlle for self-sufficiency on high seas. Innovative rigging, water still, solar panels, radios, radar, etc., and a 24-ft. diameter parachute sea anchor.
The atmosphere in the cabin was full of tension and dread, so Glennie tried to calm the situation by turning on the radio and tuning into some soothing music. However, Phil remained at the opposite end of the relaxed scale: “He had steadily worked himself into a panic. Nothing Rick, Jim or I could say or do would calm him down. He was absolutely convinced the boat was going to capsize. He was terrified and at times close to hysteria. He would lie for a few minutes in his bunk, leap up, peer out of the window, and call out, ‘We’re going to flip over. We’re going to flip over.’”
Rick and Phil called on Glennie to launch a small sea anchor off the stern to help reduce speed, even though he didn’t feel there was any reason for concern: “It was the beginning of a series of events over which I should have taken more control. It was my boat, and I was by far the most experienced person on board.”
The four lost souls then spent hours deliberating on how far an aircraft would travel to reach 15,000 feet and decided that it was 80 miles. They also convinced themselves that the aircraft could not have come from Wellington or Christchurch. Taking this information and the direction of their drift they then positioned themselves on a small chart they had retrieved and realised they were heading towards the Hauraki Gulf, which was an outer area of Auckland harbour.
After 40 days of living their nightmare, the four were still managing to survive on food and equipment they were regularly able to scrounge from the submerged lockers within the yacht. For the most part their emotional stability was retained due to a firm belief that they would be rescued at any moment, although Phil maintained his doubts.
Ingenuity was the call of the day as the four inverted sailors struggled to build their new abode. They used blankets, wet weather gear, boots, clothes, cupboard doors and even two dozen toilet paper rolls to create their version of an island bed above water level. Then, with it complete, they crawled one by one through the 23-inch by 23-inch tunnel into the tiny cavity to lie down: “Everything, including our clothes, was soaking wet. We huddled like sardines in a tin in a space as small as a queen-size bed. We had to lie facing the same way, nestled against each other like spoons, wet spoons in a cutlery set. Above us we had just 7 inches of headroom. It was like being trapped in a dark wet cave. Suddenly I remembered the words of a clairvoyant I had visited shortly before leaving on this trip: (You will have an adventure in an underground cave.) Was this it? I wondered.”
For 19 years, Glennie had dreamed of this voyage from his native New Zealand to Tonga and onwards to other enchanting islands in the South Pacific. He was a highly experienced offshore yachtsman with more than 40,000 cruising miles to his credit, and that included sailing in the Roaring Forties.
When the sea anchor was set they were 140 miles offshore and still south of the 40th parallel. This was the Roaring Forties— the breeding ground for some of the worst storms imaginable.
Rose-Noëlle was a trimaran that capsized at 6 AM on June 4, 1989, in the southern Pacific Ocean off the coast of New Zealand. Four men (John Glennie, James Nalepka, Rick Hellriegel and Phil Hoffman) survived adrift on the wreckage of the ship for 119 days.
After being hit by a rogue wave during a storm, the trimaran capsized, trapping the crew inside. After cutting an escape hatch, they set the EPIRB, convinced that they would be rescued a few days later. The water tanks, which contained 140 liters of fresh water, slowly emptied themselves unbeknown to the crew. The EPIRB, which had a radius of one hundred nautical miles, stopped working on June 13 after 8 days. They made a rain water collecting device by splitting lengths o…
Their story is told in the 2015 New Zealand television film Abandoned, starring Dominic Purcell and Peter Feeney, along with Owen Black and Greg Johnson. It was directed by John Laing.
• Dominic Purcell as James Nalepka
• Peter Feeney as John Glennie, owner of Rose-Noëlle
• Owen Black as Rick Hellriegel
• Steven Callahan, survived 76 days adrift in the Atlantic
• Dougal Robertson, survived 38 days adrift in the Pacific
• Maurice and Maralyn Bailey, survived 117 days adrift in the Pacific
• Poon Lim, who survived 133 days adrift in the Atlantic
• Glennie, John; Phare, Jane (1990). The Spirit of Rose-Noelle: 119 days adrift: a survival story. ISBN 0-449-22082-6.
• Nalepka, James; Callahan, Steven (1993). Capsized: The true story of four men adrift for 119 days. ISBN 978-0060179618.
• "Safe haven". Magazine of the Queen Elizabeth II National Trust. November 2006 – via thebarrier.co.nz.
• "Hope remains for couple lost at sea". The Age. 27 July 2005.