Tami Oldham Ashcraft Survived Alone at Sea After Hurricane Raymond Destroyed Her Yacht

A dream trip turns catastrophic

In October 1983, Tami Oldham Ashcraft and her fiancé, Richard Sharp, set out to transport a 44-foot yacht named Hazana from Tahiti to San Diego in what was expected to be a 31-day journey.

The owners had promised the couple $10,000 and two first-class airline tickets after delivery. At first, the voyage seemed to be unfolding as planned. Then Hurricane Raymond changed course.

The storm that changed everything

Tami later said she had faced storms before, but never a hurricane. As the couple tried to avoid the system, they found themselves facing winds of 140 miles per hour and waves rising to 50 feet.

Richard told Tami, who was 23 at the time, to stay below deck while he secured himself in a safety harness and handled the storm. Moments later, she heard him shout, “Oh my God!” before the yacht overturned and threw her unconscious against the cabin wall.

Waking into loss and wreckage

When she regained consciousness, 27 hours had passed. The storm had subsided, but Hazana was partially submerged and badly damaged. The masts were gone, the sails were destroyed, and both the radio and navigation systems had failed.

Richard was missing, and his safety harness hung uselessly in the water. Tami later said, “I was just a mess,” describing a serious head injury, heavy blood loss, and total exhaustion.

Survival by focus and improvisation

Despite the damage, she began pumping water from the cabin and built a makeshift sail with a broken pole and a storm jib. Her usable tools were reduced to a watch and a sextant.

With no rescue arriving, she set a course for Hilo, Hawaii, about 1,500 miles away. For 41 days, she survived on canned fruit salad and sardines while rationing the boat’s limited water supply so severely that she said she drank only about a Dixie cup each day.

She later explained that staying busy with navigation helped keep her moving forward. “I wasn’t going to just sit and wait for someone to rescue me,” she said.

The emotional strain of being alone

At night, the grief became even harder to carry. She wrapped one of Richard’s shirts around a pillow and said, “I felt his presence with me the entire time.”

Two ships and a low-flying aircraft passed nearby without spotting her. Finally, on the forty-first day, a Japanese research ship noticed the damaged yacht near Hilo Harbor.

What remained after survival

Tami’s ordeal later became widely known through her memoir Red Sky in Mourning: A True Story of Love, Loss, and Survival at Sea

and the film

Adrift

.

She later said the hardest part was living with Richard’s absence, even after reaching safety. Today she lives on San Juan Island and wears a small sextant pendant as a reminder of how she found her way home.