Father & Daughter Thrown Overboard: A Parent's Nightmare

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0:33It's early afternoon, Sunday May the 30th, 2021. On the coast of Western Australia, gale force winds churn the waters of Durian Bay into a turbid frenzy. The 40-knot gusts are multidirectional, blowing, it seems, from every angle, from all points of the compass. The result is confusion and chaos, an angry, frothing maelstrom. Waves barrel into each other, their foamy crests merging and erupting in vertical blasts of spray. Though we are just two nautical miles from shore, the rocky headland is obscured behind a shroud of sea fog. On one of the small islands that guard the entrance to the bay, the glow of a lighthouse perforates the mist.

1:24A faint white pinprick in the all-consuming grey. On calmer days, this stretch of coast is popular with sailors and surfers, but nobody would venture out in conditions like these. And today, there isn't a soul out there. At least, there shouldn't be. But four kilometers out to sea, beyond the reef that skirts the bay's wide mouth, a pair of red life jackets are visible against the side of a surging five-meter swell. 41 year old Glenn Anderson and his daughter Ruby just 11 years old. Glenn reaches for his daughter and pulls her into him seconds before a massive wave rolls over their heads forcing them both under.

2:15They emerge gasping and disoriented the whites of their eyes gleaming in the murky half darkness. With one hand gripping Ruby's life jacket, Glenn scans the debris that floats around them, searching for something buoyant to hold onto. I remember I grabbed a wooden awl and kind of tucked that under Ruby's arms to help her float while I was still holding her. And then I also grabbed a dye slipper that was floating nearby. Glenn shoves one foot into the flipper, which luckily is the right size. Then he lifts his head and begins frantically looking for their boat amid the rollicking waves. There it is, about ten meters away, lurching up and down on the heavy swell.

3:01It's close enough for Glenn to make out what's happening on deck. Their three other crew members emerge from the cabin to find Glenn and Ruby gone. Glenn catches their attention, bellowing for help at the top of his lungs and waving his free arm. the crew having spotted the two in the water rush to start the boat's engine so they can turn it around and pick them up but something's wrong the engine won't start and meanwhile the vessel is drifting further and further from glenn and ruby glenn adjusts his grip around his daughter's chest and starts desperately paddling in the direction of the boat so they've kind of drifted towards where there were more breaking waves and we were trying to swim towards them but the boat was drifting further downwind from us, but they're drifting faster than we could swim.

3:59Ever wondered what you would do when disaster strikes? If your life depended on your next decision, could you make the right choice? Welcome to Real Survival Stories. These are the astonishing tales of ordinary people thrown into extraordinary situations. People suddenly forced to fight for their lives. In this episode, we meet 41-year-old Glenn Anderson. In May 2021, the schoolteacher and keen amateur yachtsman is sailing up the coast of Western Australia with his 11-year-old daughter Ruby. For Glenn, the trip is an opportunity to share his passion with his child, and maybe to pass on his love of sailing to her.

4:40But as they near the halfway point of their adventure, things are not going to plan. Conditions are rough, and Ruby, though she puts on a brave face, is struggling. And then things go from bad to worse. All of a sudden I heard a noise, a noise of a wave breaking, just off to our port side. And I looked and probably 50 metres away there was a wave which I would say would have been about 15 feet high. When a freak wave slams into the yacht, Glenn and Ruby will be thrown overboard, pitched headlong into the seething waters of the Indian Ocean. Ruby was almost asleep at the time, so she had no idea what had happened.

5:21She hadn't seen or heard the wave. Next thing she knew, she was waking up in the ocean. Falling overboard will be just the beginning. With his terrified daughter being pushed by the waves in one direction and his boat rapidly drifting away in the other, Glenn will find himself in a terrible position as a captain and an even worse one as a father. Ruby and I were separated from the rest of the crew without a beacon, without any way of anyone knowing exactly where we were. I'm John Hopkins. From the Noiser Podcast Network, this is Real Survival Stories.

6:19It's Saturday the 29th of May 2021, just off Rottnest Island near Perth, Western Australia. 41 year old Glenn Anderson stands on the deck of his anchored yacht, surveying the sky above the Indian Ocean. White cumulus clouds mass overhead, bruised with dark pockets of rain. May can be a tricky month here in the Southern Hemisphere, a transitional period when balmy autumns give way to wet, blustery winters. Glenn scours the horizon, stroking his bearded chin. A stiff breeze is blowing, dappling the sea with jagged whitecaps. Weather reports predict this wind to get stronger, with forecasted gusts of 25 to 30 knots.

7:07Those are rough conditions, sporty, as Glenn likes to refer to them, with perhaps a touch of understatement. Maybe it would be best to stay where they are, anchored to Windward, off the coast of Rottnest Island, and wait for the bad weather to pass.

7:45The decision is made democratically as a crew. But as captain, the buck stops with Glenn. When all is said and done, it is he who must weigh the risks against the rewards, and on this particular voyage, Glenn has good reason to be more vigilant. His eleven-year-old daughter, Ruby, is one of the crew. Glenn would never put Ruby in a situation beyond her capabilities, and the last few days sailing have shown that his daughter can more than handle herself at sea. And so, Glenn fires up the engine and steers the yacht out of the harbour. As a dad, he tries to strike a balance between emboldening Ruby to be adventurous and providing a voice of caution.

8:31It's a line that he's had to learn to walk in his own life. I guess I have what you'd probably describe as an adventurous spirit, someone that really wants to live their life and take risks and have adventures. And, you know, sometimes those risks pay off and sometimes they don't. Glenn grew up in a suburb of Perth in Western Australia, where he spent a happy childhood surfing and sailing. At 18, he went to university to study sports science with ambitions of becoming a PE teacher. But his social life quickly took precedence over his academics, and he dropped out of university after a couple of years.

9:06I kind of fell into a bit of a social pattern, let's say, and my university studies weren't exactly going well because I was kind of out partying and enjoying being 18 and 19. And yeah, probably when I reflect back, I probably wasn't ready for more study at that time. After dropping out of university, Glenn decided to join the Western Australian Police Academy and graduated as an officer at the age of 20. There were aspects of the job that suited Glenn But after a few years in the force, the cons began to outweigh the pros It was taking a toll on me psychologically Because it was a very negative atmosphere in the job Like you can imagine, you're dealing with a lot of people in difficult situations And at low points in their life And it's often a very thankless job I saw more so in other older officers that had been around And that were jaded and angry and sick of the job and I made sure I was like, I do not want to kind of end up like that down the track.

10:04Glenn quit the police force, went back to university and retrained as a teacher, only to go on to start a landscaping business. Around this time, Glenn met and married Ruby's mum. They moved to the town of Margaret River, a beach resort three hours south of Perth. The marriage didn't last, but the pair remained on good terms. After the divorce, Glenn settled in the nearby town of Busselton, where, after yet another pivot, he took a teaching job at the local high school. Throughout Glenn's various life and career changes, one thing has remained constant, his passion for being on the ocean. He goes sailing as often as he can, usually gliding around Busseldon Harbour in his 11-metre yacht, Impala 2.

10:51But what he loves more than anything is taking his boat up the coast to Ningaloo, a stretch of shoreline in Australia's far northwest, famed for its clear tropical waters and dazzling marine life. You're on the Ningaloo Reef, which is one of the most amazing reef systems in the world. And there's whale sharks, humpback whales, dugong turtles, manta rays, beautiful coral, like anything you could possibly want to be around as an ocean person is up there. So it's a really special place for me, and that's where we're going to go again in 21.

11:27A few months ago, Glenn asked Ruby if she fancied making the 750-mile voyage up the coast with him to Ningaloo. The father-daughter pair have made several shorter trips in the past, and Ruby has shown enough desire and aptitude to suggest that she is ready for something a bit more ambitious. I was obviously going to take Ruby with me this time. She was 11 years old, and I'd gotten a hesitant approval from her mother. Her mother and I had previously separated, but we were still on really good terms, and she was supportive of letting the kids have holidays and adventures, and wasn't looking to deny them experiences.

12:07After getting approval from his ex-wife, Glenn welcomed Ruby into the crew. Alongside father and daughter is a guy called Dane, a 32-year-old sailor friend of Glenn's. A few days ago, the three of them set sail from Busselton, before picking up two additional crew members in Perth, a pair of young women who responded enthusiastically to an ad Glenn posted on Facebook. Last but not least, there is Banja, Ruby's nine-month-old puppy who has come along for the ride. It's a motley crew spanning a broad spectrum of age and experience. But on a straightforward voyage like this, they can afford to have a few novices on board.

12:48They won't be straying too far from the coastline, maintaining visual contact with land for most of the journey. Barring something completely unexpected, they'll be at Ningaloo in a couple of weeks' time, diving the beautiful coral reef.

13:07It's the middle of the night, about six hours after the Impala 2 left Rottnest Island. As forecasted, the wind has increased throughout the night. All around the 40-foot yacht, the dark ocean seethes with snarling whitecaps and big, thundering breakers. The air on deck is filled with lashing spray and the furious flapping of sails. The crew takes it in turn to go on watch, grabbing snatches of sleep when they can. But the incessant lurching makes it hard to get any decent rest. Seasickness has descended And the sound of the cruise retching and heaving Underscores the relentless pounding of the waves I tried to eat something and then vomited it back up again Ruby hadn't eaten anything And I was trying to encourage her to drink water But she was just kind of saying If I drink it, I'm going to throw it up So yeah, we were all kind of low on food and low on energy By the time the morning came around At one stage during the night, Glenn notices that the dinghy, which had been attached to the stern, has disappeared, presumably ripped off by the force of the waves.

14:18I came up for my watch rotation and it was gone and the person that was on watch hadn't seen it go, so we weren't quite sure how long it had been gone for. We turned the boat around and went back to try and see if we could find it at night with swell and darkness. it's pretty hard to find a ten-foot dinghy bobbing around in the ocean.

14:42The Impala, too, slogs on. Eventually dawn appears through cracks in the night sky. The darkness lifts around the yacht, heralding a welcome end to a miserable night. But there's no let-up from the rough conditions. The grey sea undulates ahead of them in a rolling expanse of heavy swell, its surface veined with tendrils of white foam. Glenn looks around at the weather-beaten faces of his crew. As we approached Durian Bay, given regard to the seasickness that was on board, trying to increase the comfort of the crew, basically, I decided that we could pull into Durian Bay and sail through the bay rather than outside the reef and then kind of sail around the bay to the other side, around to Sandy Cape.

15:29It just meant that we'd be out of the swell. a bit more and hopefully it'll be even more comfortable. Ruby, in particular, looks like she needs a break. After a night without any food or water, the 11-year-old's face is pallid and drawn. For the benefit of everyone, Glenn plans a change of course. Conditions should be calmer in Durian Bay, a wide, curved inlet just beyond a scattering of islands to the east of their current course. Sailing through the relative calmness of the bay will allow them all to recover their sea legs. Decision made. Glenn turns the wheel and steers the yacht through a passage between two of the small islands.

16:15It's about 20 minutes later. Glenn grips the wheel as the yacht forges on through the passage. The ocean remains a confusion of waves charging in different directions. Some sweep towards land, while others careen westward, borne along by the powerful undertow. The result is messy, foamy and jagged. Waves smashing into each other, sending up plumes of whitewater. These are dicey conditions, but nothing that an experienced skipper like Glenn can't handle. There'd been nothing ahead of where we were sailing that had caused me any concern. I'd been, you know, looking for a good 10-15 minutes to like down this passage and then I hadn't seen any waves or anything that had really kind of made me think, oh, this is not the right place to be.

17:06The yacht ploughs forward, jerkily pitching and swaying through the muddled seas. Glenn keeps his eyes fixed ahead. Visibility is poor. The spray off the ocean mingles with a low-lying mist creating an opaque screen of grey. He has to use all his senses to navigate, hearing and feeling his way through the passage. Ruby sits beside him in the cockpit, shuddering with nausea, life jacket zipped to her chin. Glenn glances down to make sure she's alright, which is when he hears it. All of a sudden I heard a noise, a noise of a wave breaking just off to our port side. And I looked and probably 50 meters away, there was a wave, which I would say would have been about 15 feet high.

17:55A freak wave, dwarfing those around it. In the seconds before impact, Glenn has time to take in the size of this immense wall of water hurtling from the mist. I turned the boat to go with the wave, which in hindsight probably wasn't the best call. I don't like sitting there, there's a lot of time to think about it. As Glenn turns the wheel, the yacht is swept up like a scrap of flotsam, lifted and tossed sideways as it's broadsided by the behemoth. In the cockpit, the wave hits with the impact of a detonating bomb. Glenn and Ruby are engulfed by the blast. This wave just kind of picked up the boat and white water filled the entire cockpit.

18:42And the boat was slammed down onto its side, masked into the water. And Ruby and I were thrown out of the cockpit into the water by that wave. For a moment, Glenn is helpless. Like a ragdoll, the force of the water pulls his limbs in different directions, tumbling him in the agitated surf. water thunders in his ears as his mouth and nose fill with brine a second later the chaos of the initial impact subsides enough for him to push his head above the surface gasping and spluttering looking around for ruby he spots the flash of a red life jacket and then his daughter's face her eyes wide with terror glenn grabs her and pulls her into him.

19:28Then he turns his head in the direction of the boat. It's already some distance away, toppled on its side, rising and falling with a swell. Glenn grits his teeth and starts to kick. We were trying to swim towards him, but the boat was drifting further downwind from us. It was drifting faster than we could swim.

19:53It's about midday on Sunday, May the 30th, 2021. In the Indian Ocean of the west coast of Australia, Glenn Anderson and his 11-year-old daughter Ruby are two tiny heads bobbing in the granite grey swell. With frantic, laboured strokes, father and daughter pull themselves through the water, back in the direction of their boat. But the distance between them and the vessel is getting wider every second. Glenn lifts his head above the churning surf. Through the spray he can just make out the shapes of the other three on board, all of whom were below deck when the wave hit. The yacht must have righted itself after the knockdown, and surely the crew must have realized by now that Glenn and Ruby are in the water.

20:40They'll soon come back for them. But as Glenn watches his yacht rise and fall with the motion of the sea, he spots another monstrous wave roll in. And then, yeah, I saw the next wave hit the boat. The crew was all up on deck by this point. A similar size wave to what had hit us first came through, knocked the boat down again. They all managed to hold on to the boat somehow. And then the boat righted itself again. But by that point, it had taken on too much water and it just started sinking. Glenn can only watch in dismay as his beloved boat's sleek white hull drops below the waterline. Before slipping beneath the waves, the three crew members on board fasten their life jackets and hurl themselves into the ocean Within seconds, all that remains of the Impala 2 is the tip of her 40-foot mast And then she is gone, swallowed by the sea Glenn and Ruby struggle over to where the other three are bobbing amid the debris of the sunk boat But there is one member of the crew missing So we got together and I can't remember who asked it, but someone said, where's Banjo?

21:54And we kind of called his name out a couple of times. They scour the murky, debris-filled water, praying to catch sight of the little dog. But there is no sign. And I just said, look, he's gone. He's not going to make this. We just have to let that go. And that's the only time that Ruby cried, I think, during the whole day. Through everything that happened, yeah, when she realized Banjo was gone, she burst into tears. And I said, there's nothing we can do about that right now. We need to just focus on getting ourselves through this. And that was the last we ever saw of him. However painful, now is not the time to mourn.

22:40The remaining crew members find themselves in an incredibly dangerous position. One, they must start taking immediate steps to resolve. There's the five of us floating in the middle of the ocean. No boat, debris everywhere. And then it was kind of time to make a plan. First things first, they assess their injuries. Fortunately, nobody seems to have sustained anything critical, beyond a few cuts and bruises. Dane suspects he might have broken a rib. For his part, Glenn has suffered a nasty gash to his forehead. Blood runs down his face in crimson ribbons. Then Ruby's voice pipes up, barely audible beneath the waves.

23:22Ruby had said to me, Dad, my leg's really sore. And I kind of said, can you lift it up so I can see? And immediately when she lifted it out of the water, I could tell that she had a broken leg. It was just flopping about. Ruby's shin has cracked in two, splintered by the impact against the side of the boat. Glenn looks at his daughter who is visibly fighting to ignore the volleys of pain that must surely be firing through her limb I remember saying to her you've definitely got a broken leg but there's nothing I can do about it for you right now you're just going to have to hang in there and we need to get us out of this situation first and then we can deal with that and then she took that on and she went yep I understand and you know you could tell she was in pain the whole time but she never once complained about it after that.

24:16And I just thought that was really, really brave of her to be able to do that. Her 11-year-old girl, I was just blown away by her staunchness, I guess.

24:31Having established the extent of Ruby's injuries, the need to reach safety is even more urgent. Glenn looks around. He reckons they are probably about four kilometres from the mainland, about two and a half miles, but separated from shore by a shallow reef. Swimming over it will risk being dashed against sharp rock. Then, just above the crest of the swell, Glenn catches a glimpse of an island, a flat, rocky protrusion barely shading their horizon. It is their best hope. Before they set off swimming for the island, the shipwrecked sailors activate their EPIRB beacon. This essential piece of kit sends out a distress signal via satellite.

25:18If it works as it should, it will transmit alerts to all search and rescue authorities in the area. Dane straps the EPIRB to his person for safekeeping. Then the five of them start to swim. Given Ruby's condition, Glenn has to hold his daughter with one arm and paddle with the other. From the debris, he has managed to grab a wooden oar, which the 11-year-old now grips for some extra buoyancy. He's also found a single diving flipper, which helps as he kicks. Even so, in the vicious conditions, it's hard to make progress. It isn't long before Glenn and Ruby have fallen well behind the others. With me having to tow Ruby, I couldn't really keep up with the way the other crew were swimming.

26:06so we kind of came together and spread apart and came together and spread apart a couple of times just because the sea was so chaotic as well. Glenn lifts his head. The other three are barely visible now. Tiny specks of red against the dark ocean. It's no use trying to catch up. The distance is too great. The current's too powerful. Time for a change of plan. Glenn glances to his right. There is only one option. He and Ruby are going to have to swim across the reef and into the bay, where the current will be less strong. From there, they'll have to swim directly for the mainland.

26:50Grimacing, Glenn turns his body and, with one arm tight around Ruby's chest, begins swimming towards the reef. The sea here is even rougher, as the waves break against a shallow rock, churning the water into a deadly whirlpool. There was a couple of times that a big breaking wave was coming over, and I'd say to Ruby, OK, ready for a breath hold, right? Hold a breath now, and we'd dunk under the wave, let it pass over, let it roll us, and then we'd pop up the other side, and then repeated that a few times until we were through the part where the waves were breaking on the reef. Eventually, Glenn and Ruby make it across the reef and into the slightly calmer waters of the bay.

27:34They're through the most dangerous stretch, but getting past the reef was a sprint. Now they have a marathon ahead of them, a long, arduous swim to shore. Plus, crossing the reef has sealed their separation from the others, and more importantly, from the EPIRB. Without the satellite beacon, the father and daughter are truly on their own So, Ruby and I were separated from the rest of the crew Without a beacon, without any way of anyone knowing exactly where we were So yeah, from that point on, my mindset was just I'm just going to keep swimming

28:19It's about an hour later Glenn's muscles burn as he toes his daughter's weakened body through the waves, kicking his legs with as much power as he can muster. Ruby shivers violently in his arms, her teeth chattering. Glenn is a strong swimmer, but this awkward way of moving through the water with one arm around Ruby's chest is testing his abilities. No sooner has he found a rhythm than the acid buildup becomes too painful and he has to readjust grip.

29:00Every feeble kick, every limp, laboured stroke, they gain a modicum of distance, an inch here, an inch there, closing the gap to the shore one minuscule increment at a time. But as time ebbs away, so too does Glenn's energy. And physical exhaustion isn't the only danger here. Blood still oozes from the cut in Glenn's forehead, slicking the surface of the sea around them. Surely, it's only a matter of time before the blood attracts those hungry predators for which Australia's coastal waters are notorious. But right now, that doesn't bear thinking about. I just didn't allow that thought to enter my head because it just wouldn't have been helpful at all.