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Peter Frick-Wright (Host): This is the �����ԹϺ��� Podcast

On a Sunday morning in 2017, Matthew Bryce went surfing in Scotland, where he lived. There was a brisk offshore wind, which is kind of what you want. And there wasn't anyone else in the water, which is also what you want. Kind of. I read about Matthew a few months later, and got on the phone with him a few weeks after that.

He had been blown out to sea on his surfboard, and rescued after 32 hours closer to Ireland than Scotland. And as soon as we talked, I knew the episode was going to be good, which is why we're replaying it today while we gear up for the new episodes we have coming later this year. But telling his story was also going to be tricky.

We were making our second batch of Science of Survival episodes at the time, and one of the hallmarks of those stories was that they were told in the second person, by this omniscient narrator. The problem was, Matthew told his story beautifully. So beautifully, we had to figure out a way to use his interview.

It took a long time to figure out, but eventually we found a transition point where the story goes from mostly external, the physical challenges of spending a day and a half on a surfboard, to mostly internal, the mental and emotional challenges of being lost at sea. From that point on, as much as possible, We try to let Matthew tell the story in his own words.

And the piece turned out to be, I think, one of the most emotional, visceral, and unique stories we've gotten to tell on this show. A survival tale directly from someone who lived through something extraordinary. And a piece that simply is not the same to read about as it is to listen to. There are a dozen little anecdotes I could tell about making this episode, but none of them are as interesting as just listening to Matthew.

So here he is. Eventually.

Sarah Mollo-Christensen (Narrator): The wind is steady and perfect as you nudge your car towards the beach to see the waves and check the surf. It's quiet and empty and peaceful. Just three or four people on six miles of sand. It's why you come here. Two days ago, after a long session at your local climbing gym back in Glasgow, you checked the forecast and nearly danced with joy.

A six foot swell would be hitting Scotland's west coast all day Sunday. The sun would be out, and a strong offshore wind would shape the waves into perfect crescent lips a few hundred yards out. This empty beach, in those conditions? You can't think of a better weekend.

The shortboard on your roof hasn't been out since last year, so you spend a few minutes spreading wax around. A stranger in the parking area zips up the back of your wetsuit. Then you eat a banana, deciding to leave behind the candy bar on your front seat. It'll be a perfect after surf treat.

The wind is blowing straight out to sea. It's stronger than you thought it would be, but moving in the right direction. It carries you out through all the waves trying to push you back to shore. It's the easiest paddle out you can remember, and the water is cold but not unbearable. You have a wetsuit, and you'll build a fire once you get back to camp.

And you're Scottish. Cold and wet is how you live.

You catch three waves before heading out past the breakers to rest. They'll be the only waves you catch, today.

Bobbing in the ocean like a cork, marveling at your good fortune to be out here, you start drifting away from land, too slowly to notice as you stare out at the massive sea. But looking back towards the shore, yes, you're definitely moving away from land. You're riptide.

Riptides kill hundreds of people each year. They are the ocean's deadliest phenomenon. But riptides have nothing to do with tides. A rip is a current of water pushing back out to sea. Waves push water towards shore, rip currents take that water back out, and they can move as fast as two meters per second, dragging swimmers, surfers, and even unlucky dogs out past the surf zone.

But, riptides are narrow bands of current, and usually surrounded on both sides by water pushing back towards land. All you have to do is get out of the rip and swim back to shore. You paddle sideways, parallel to the beach, and wait to feel the current let you go. It's odd that it never does.

Getting frustrated with your lack of progress, you decide to turn straight towards shore and sprint back to land.

But after 15 minutes, your shoulder seizes up in a cramp, and every stroke sends a spear of agony up and down your right side, sitting up on your board to stretch the muscles you overworked at the climbing gym. You realize in one sickening moment that you're still drifting out to sea, and that it's not a rip current you're stuck in, but that perfect offshore wind pushing you ceaselessly away from land,

sitting up even straighter. You try to wave at people on shore, but the wind just gets even more purchase. You're now a half a mile out to sea, and to them you just look like a flapping bird, gliding on the wind, which, unfortunately, You are.

Somewhere south of you, down the beach. You know there's a long spit of land jutting out into the ocean. The tide is pulling you toward it. Even though it's 6 or 7 miles from where you parked, if you paddle with the current, you should hit it. It'll be a long walk back to your car, but this will be quite the story to tell.

And you can stop in first at the local pub, have a laugh, and get some soup. Maybe a ride back to your camp spot.

You paddle slowly with your injured shoulder, and an hour passes. You're getting closer to land, but not very quickly. And you're slowing down.

Another hour goes by and you curse your decision not to eat that candy bar.

It's only after three hours that you're finally close enough to see people on shore. As you're hunkering down for the final push, you let yourself daydream about warmth, about food, and company. You'll tell the bartender about it and he'll give you a round on the house. You'll tell the locals about it and they'll tell the story for months.

You're rehearsing it in your head. When a single pink balloon floats out silently past you on the wind, the strangeness of it snaps you out of your single minded pursuit, and you look around. That's when you realize you've stopped moving. The tides have changed, and the water you were counting on to carry you south is now pushing you back north, back out to sea.

Tides follow the moon. High tide is when the moon is directly overhead or directly under your feet on the opposite side of the Earth. When it's directly overhead, the moon's gravity pulls ocean water towards it, increasing the volume of water in that part of the world. Low tide is the theft of that water by the moon's gravity as it travels away.

In the channel between Scotland and Ireland, the water runs back and forth twice a day, chasing the moon, pulling you north and south like a game of pong.

All you know is that you won't reach the shore you spent half a day paddling towards. This is becoming more serious than the foolhardy adventure you first took it for. You may never again set foot on dry land. This is the moment you realize you could die.

You're pulled north, and then back south again six hours later. There's nothing to do but cling to your board. You force yourself to paddle thirty seconds at a time, but it's more to stay warm than in hope of reaching shore. The sun's going down, and you're miles out to sea. No one knows you're out here.

You have no way of signaling for help. There is no plan, just a creeping despair and an impulse to try and stay warm.

This is when you first think to yourself, not that you could die, but that you probably will.

There's no way to know how many people have been set adrift, alone on the ocean. The typical story starts with a shipwreck. In 1972, Scottish sailor Dougal Robertson and his family survived for 38 days at sea in a small dinghy after killer whales sunk their schooner near the Galapagos Islands. In 1981, naval architect Stephen Callahan lost his boat to a storm and survived 76 days at sea in a life raft.

He then came home and designed a better life raft. In 2012, José Alvarenga, an El Salvadoran fisherman working in Mexico, was swept out to sea by a storm and survived 438 days alone in a small boat. Eating fish and drinking turtle blood. Alvarenga's ordeal may be the most harrowing experience we know of, but Japanese sailor Oguri Jukichi and two of his crew hold the record for the most time spent adrift.

In 1815, their ship was damaged in a storm, and they spent 484 days at sea. Drifting from Tokyo to California, they drank rainwater and ate the soybeans in their cargo hold. They were rescued just before succumbing to scurvy. But all of these people were in a life raft or small boat, most in warm or tropical waters.

They were completely dry most of the time. You're on a shortboard, half of your body in the water, off the coast of Scotland. You might not make it till morning.

Peter: We'll be right back.

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Sarah: When night falls and the darkness takes over, you lose all sense of time and space. Lights on the shore go out. Distant cargo vessels in the shipping lanes disappear over the horizon. There are no stars, no moon, no way to tell how far you've drifted or which direction. It's the deepest blackest night you've ever seen.

All you can do is take stock of your discomfort. The cold is torture, terrible and constant. You have cramps in your thighs and the backs of your legs, and you've spent so much time kicking your feet that they're stuck in the pointed position. Your hands are numb and you have no grip at all. Your blood is turning sludgy and thick from dehydration.

You've been in 50 degree water for 15 hours. Your wetsuit has now saved your life many times over, but your body temperature is somewhere in the low 90s. Just a few more degrees, and the cold will win. You'll lose consciousness and drown, but not yet. You try and keep your face dry, but whenever you relax, the waves wash over your head. Small insects, glowing and blue, appear beside you in the water, and you poke at them with your numb hand. Unsure bioluminescence? Or a hallucination, your brain's way of distracting you from the voice in your head that recently started saying, No one is coming.

There's no point in suffering. Give up. Give up. Give up.

The voice is your only companion at night.

It catalogs your life and all of your achievements, regrets, places you didn't go, and things you didn't say. You start thinking of family members and friends. All the things you'd change, and all the things you cherish. You remember falling out with your brother, then making peace again. You think through each person in your life and say goodbye, like checking off a list.

I love you. Goodbye. I'm sorry.

And then finally, hopeless and cold. You slip off the board into the water and let it drift away.

Mathew: I slipped off the board, deliberately intending to, to die.

Sarah: Your head goes under, and you don't even feel the cold. You just relax, because it's over.

Mathew: Except I hadn't undone the leash.

Sarah: You forgot about the leash.

Mathew: From the surfboard. And so when I started drowning, I felt that tug from my ankle and I chased that tug and grabbed the board again. And pulled myself up.

Peter (Interview):When you decided to, to let go of the board, I mean, was it a matter of I'm so miserable, I just, I sort of, I want this to end? Or was it more of like, you know, I know the statistics here, like that the chances of me being found and surviving are so low. You know, there's no point now. Or does it even fit into either category?

Mathew: I think it's probably a mix of the two, to be honest. Um, because it was, it was really like a bone chilling cold. Um, and I did, I wanted that to end. I was just, it was painful. It was incredibly unpleasant. It was just a horrible, horrible feeling to be that cold. I didn't actually think I was going to make it through the night.

I thought I was going to die of hypothermia before that point. So In my head I was thinking, okay, I'm going to die of hypothermia, you know, let's just end it.

Peter (Interview): You kind of said that you were evaluating your life, were, what did you, were you happy with it? What you saw? No,

Mathew: no, not at all. Like I, I had had dinner on the Saturday night with my family, with my mum and dad, um, and it was something as simple as I'd said goodnight instead of I love you.

Like those were the last words to my parents, I said goodnight. and thinking that I'd not said I love you at that point, that that tears, like you're not happy you've done that, and then it's all those little things that you could have done better.

Peter (Interview): That just, I mean, that just sounds like, uh, almost like you're, you're hurting yourself at that point. Um, was there any sense of like, Brain is telling you this almost as a way to, like, motivate you to keep going and change things? No. that?

Mathew: No, not at all. Um, that motivation came afterwards. Um, but at that point, it was just, you know, despair. You know, there still was no motivation. The only motivation at that point was to stay, uh, warm.

And really, emotionally, after that, I was very numb. Because, because I still, in my head, the only truth was that I was going to die.

Sarah: You start paddling, just trying to warm up, angry at yourself for being a quitter. You will paddle all night, not to get anywhere, just to survive. Pretty soon, you have a new plan.

Mathew: And then it kind of occurred to me that, oh, I'm supposed to be working today. Um, so if it's five now, I'm supposed to be in work by nine.

And they'll, they should call my parents maybe about ten or half ten. And then they may realize, oh, He's not came home, so they're gonna call the Coast Guard and then the search might start by 12th. Um, but throughout that day, you know, I was very numb because, you know, in my head I was still thinking, you know, I'm a dead man.

I'm a dead man. And all I'm doing is I'm focusing on the cold. Um, I'm focusing on trying to keep my head out of the water. Um, it's the only thing I can really focus on because I can't get water. I can't get food. The only thing I can focus on is my heat. You know, you kind of went back to the most primal Instincts. You know, water, food, heat, focus on that. So that kept me going through the night, and then through the morning. And then, during the morning, maybe about 12 o'clock, 1 o'clock, so the afternoon, Um, I actually saw a helicopter, uh, flying about, and searching in squares. And then I realised a search was starting.

And that kept me going as well, because I realised people were out looking for me. At that point I was like, horribly, horribly dehydrated, and a little bit delirious. And I had a wet suit that was going over my ears, so I could hear like just the, the gentlest just, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, just that gentlest noise.

And I, I, I thought I was imagining it at that point. I thought that was just in my head. So I would take the hood off my ear to see if I could hear it and it was just the softest kind of shoop shoop shoop. So I didn't know if I was imagining it or it was real but then I saw the helicopter come over and I heard it then because it got, you know, steadily louder.

Sarah: They search for hours in perfect squares. But they don't realize how far you've blown out to sea.

Mathew: And they, if they'd continued doing those squares northwards, they would have actually flew over me.

Sarah: You watch them give up and fly away. Or maybe they just need to refuel. Your heart would sink if it weren't already completely waterlogged.

Mathew: I mean, during the second day, eh, like, I started to kind of, like, mentally just, like, break down, um, you know, I started getting almost manic, eh, there was, eh, some seagulls and ducks, like, swimming nearby, eh, around me, and I just started laughing to myself, thinking, oh, I must be near land.

Because I was between, like, Northern Ireland and Scotland, so I could see land in every direction. And then I kinda made that joke that I must be near land, and I just kinda laughed and laughed kinda manically.

That was the only other real point during the second day that I can really remember.

Sarah: It's hours later that you finally see the helicopter again, swooping towards you from shore. It's just a blur in the distance. But this is your chance.

Mathew: So I slipped back on my board and used it, my body, to kind of prop it up, to point it upwards. And I was kind of wiggling it and waving it, um, to try and, you know, catch their attention.

It was a last ditch effort.

Sarah: And they do. They see you. In fact, the helicopter swoops all the way down and lands on the water, right in front of your board. Then you blink it into focus. And it's just a bird.

Mathew: So I was waving at like seabirds to recover me. Wow. Like I was, I was delirious

Sarah: through the delirium, the one thing you know for sure is that you won't last another night. Your body temperature is nearing its lower limit. You'll pass out soon. So as the hours drag on you point your surfboard away from home towards the setting sun. If it drops below the horizon, you decide you'll let go of the board. But not until after you've undone the leash.

Mathew: So I was just facing out east, uh, sorry, west, uh, towards where the sun was setting. So I was watching the sun set, and in my head, when the sun was setting, in my head was, you know, that's it, I'm just gonna slip off the water. You've done well to carry this long, but, you know, that's, that's you done, you're not gonna make it a second night, so,

Sarah: just, you know, slip off.

So I was watching the sun.

Mathew: And then I could hear that kind of shoop, shoop, shoop, very, very faintly. And in my head, you kind of expect them to just stop there and, you know, move quickly and, you know, drop down and start recovering you. But they, they flew over me in a straight line. And in my head, I thought, okay, they've missed me.

That, that's it, um,

Sarah: but then they turned around and stopped.

I'm very, very aware that the only reason I'm alive right now is through

Mathew: luck. It was just one co pilot's, you know, corner of the eye that caught me, eh, when they were flying past. But they, they dropped down, um, and they moved towards me. And I saw the, um, I don't know what he's called, but he, the guy who came down on the line.

to recover me. Um, they moved towards me, they flew closer to me once the lane was in the water and he came up to me and just said well done. Like that's all

Sarah: he said, he just said well done.

And so they took me onto the, the helicopter

Mathew: and I just collapsed on the floor. And at that point that's when, see all that emotion that had been building up for that whole day, that's when that all came up and I was crying like a child. Like it was, Like it was almost explosive. Because in my head, I'd be going, I'm a dead man.

I'm a dead man. I am dead. You're going to die. And that big bit of my brain that was just saying, let go, give up, you know, you're going to die. That disappeared as well. And then you had that point of saying, you're safe,

Sarah: you're safe, you're safe.

Peter: That was Matthew Bryce. Who wanted me to reiterate that if you're doing something outside, please tell someone where you're going and what you're doing. This episode was produced and edited by me, Peter Frickwright, with sound design by Robbie Carver, music by Nona Envy. Our narrator was Sarah Molo Christensen.

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