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Declared Dead at Sea — Then They Came Back | The Rose-Noëlle Story
July 25, 2026 · 37 min · 302K views
What this video covers
Four men aboard the trimaran Rose-Noëlle capsized in the Southern Ocean on June 4, 1989, when a 60-foot rogue wave in a cross sea rolled the 6.5-ton vessel after the parachute sea anchor's trip line collapsed the chute and left the boat beam-on.▶ 13:34 The capsize came four days into a passage from Picton Harbor to Tonga.▶ 7:37 Skipper John Glennie, who had spent 19 years building the trimaran by hand, had designed her to be stable inverted — and that doctrine kept all four men alive for 119 days adrift.▶ 4:12 Their 121.5 MHz EPIRB carried no position or vessel ID; its battery died after ten days of transmitting into empty sky, and a garbled radio relay sent an Air Force Orion to search 600 miles away near the Kermadec Islands.▶ 17:09 New Zealand's Water Safety Council listed all four as drowned.▶ 17:24 Survival depended on a rain catchment system Glennie built from a spinnaker pole, split conduit, and a bucket — rain arrived within an hour of its completion on day 40.▶ 18:57 The unpainted hull grew goose barnacles and mussels, attracting yellowtail kingfish and hapuka.▶ 19:48 On day 100, Glennie served burritos from provisions he had planned 50 days in advance.▶ 20:35 The crew returned alive but were publicly accused of fabricating the account.▶ 29:18 Glennie, now 85, provided James Evenson letters, newspaper clippings, and a written account for this retelling.▶ 2:12 A parachute anchor's trip line, not the anchor itself, caused the capsize.▶ 11:11
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