Troubled waters

Matt Lauer: The waves are now between two and three meters.  We're talking between six and 10 feet high.

Rich Neely:  Yeah.

Matt Lauer: That's big waves.

Rich Neely:  Yeah.  Big waves. And we're watching them come as a wall of water. Maybe three or four waves would come past and then a smaller one would just come and slap you in the face—

Ally Dalton: Smack you in the face.

Rich Neely:  Very hard. We were pretty angry.  We were shouting at the waves. (laughter) And-- "Why?  What did we do to deserve that one? Thank you very much." 

Ally Dalton: As the waves were getting bigger, we put our masks on so that it actually added a little bit of warmth because it protected our face.

At 7:15, as they battled the relentless seas, Rich took this photo of Ally - and this one of himself.

Rich Neely:  I wanted people to see this and know that we look wet, cold, angry, miserable.

Ally Dalton: Terrified. 

Rich Neely: Terrified.

In the piercing cold, the couple clung together, desperate for warmth.

Rich Neely:  Ally's shivering - a lot more than me. I'm feeling guilty because I've got a 7-millimeter wetsuit, and Ally's got a 5-millimeter wetsuit.

Matt Lauer: Yours is a lot warmer than hers is?

Rich Neely:  Yeah.  

Matt Lauer: Thicker.

Rich Neely:  Thicker. I know Ally's very, very distressed, so we pulled each other together, wrapped our legs around each other, pushed our stomachs together. I didn't know if it would work or not, if the warmth would transfer through the neoprene, but it did, didn't it?  

Ally Dalton: U-huh, helped a lot.

Rich Neely:  We said, "Hey, hey, can you feel? Can you feel the warmth?" "Yeah, I can."

Matt Lauer: You think it was a physical warmth, or more of an emotional warmth? Kind of nice to have that support?

Ally Dalton: Both. It allowed me to look at him. And just that closeness gave me a sense of protection.

But waiting in the angry waves was agonizing. At 8, five hours after they were due back on board, Ally and Rich could still see their tour boat on the horizon.

Rich Neely:  Even when it was dark, we could still see the boat. We could see the mast lights.

Where were the rescue choppers? The search lights?  Rich got nervous - was huddling for warmth too risky?

Rich Neely:  While we were doing this, we were motionless. The current and the waves were taking us away from the boat. I didn't want to drift any further away from that point than we had to, so after perhaps 30 minutes of sharing heat, I'd say "Hey, we need to move. Can we do it? Can you do it?" So we'd then lay on our backs and  we were kicking our feet. At least to try and maintain some kind of position in the water.

By 9, they were in a fierce - yet delicate - battle for survival, huddling every half hour for warmth, then gently kicking on their backs.  But now Ally was worried -- recalling something she'd just read in this book.

Ally Dalton: It described the stages - progression of hypothermia and if you exercise, that's actually not good because then your body has to send blood to the muscles away from your core, and your organs. And so I knew it was in a way counterproductive.

Matt Lauer: By this point, you're really thinking "I'm in serious trouble here."

Ally Dalton: Oh, without a doubt. And for me, it was worse, because I started vomiting in the water - with nothing to bring up. And it was incredibly painful. My stomach muscles and my chest muscles were so tight.

Rich Neely:  It was really bad for me. I couldn't help her. I just had to watch.

Matt Lauer: Then, at 9:30, they got their first glimpse of hope.

Rich Neely:  "There's a light. There's a - it's a helicopter! And my instant thought was "Oh, thank you."

Ally Dalton: We did. We thought, "Okay, it's going to be okay."

Rich Neely:  Oh wow. Yeah.

Ally Dalton: There was that huge sense of relief that they're looking and they're going to start the search and they're going to find us.

Matt Lauer: Was the helicopter flying in a search pattern? Flying straight?

Ally Dalton: It started about where we could see the lights on the boat. And we could see it circling. And it was progressively getting to be a bigger circle.

Matt Lauer: Frantically, Rich began flashing his camera in the chopper's direction, signaling for help.

Rich Neely:  Every time we saw what appeared to be the helicopter on its expanding circle head towards us, I'd flash once and then hold it up again and flash again. And I got off maybe 5 flashes per trip.

Matt Lauer: Did you think they were going to see that? I mean –

Rich Neely:  I really did. I expected to flash and see the helicopter suddenly change course and come straight towards us.

Ally Dalton: And then we would see it turn away - it wasn't coming anywhere near us.

Matt Lauer: The sight of watching it disappear –

Rich Neely:  (Ally sighs) Not pleasant.

Matt Lauer: For hours, the choppers came and went, and every time they did, Rich continued to flash, his camera recording endless pictures of the black sky.

Rich Neely:  Maybe 100, 110 pictures.

Matt Lauer: Of the darkness?

Rich Neely:  Of the darkness, yeah.

By 11:30, there were fewer and fewer helicopters visible. Was the search being abandoned?  Ally and Rich had been lost at sea for eight and a half hours.

Matt Lauer: Still, at this point, the S word never mentioned between the two of you?

Ally Dalton: I didn't want to bring up sharks. I was thinking about it. I was menstruating. And being in the water that long, I knew that I was bleeding. And it - "I'm shark bait" is what I'm thinking.

Rich Neely:  I was thinking about this. "Okay are we going to be bitten by sharks. Am I going to feel, from the movie, "What is that just bumped on my leg?"

Rich Neely:  No, no. We'll be okay. We're covered in neoprene. There's no skin. And we're not bleeding anyway- we're not bleeding - oh no. And then I remembered that it was Allie's time of the month.  And I had to put it out of my head. I knew there's nothing we can do to prevent a shark being inquisitive. And I just had to convince myself, "That can't happen. We've got to be lucky."

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