Disaster at sea: Shipwreck forces a mother to make an unthinkable choice

This story originally aired Feb. 28, 2009. It was updated on July 27, 2013.

When John and Jean Silverwood set out to sail the world with their four children, they had no idea that the emotional baggage they brought on board would nearly sink them. Anger, tension and family secrets pulled them apart.But when they suddenly strike a reef, John is pinned under a fallen mast and his wife must choose between saving him and saving their children.

This is an unbelievable, but true tale of physical and emotional rescue told from the inside out.

Jean Silverwood: I just kinda stared at the ocean and I stood there and I talked to God because I didn't know what to do. We were about a day and a half out of French Polynesia. We had just left an island called Raiatea, which was about 300 miles west of Tahiti.

Amelia Silverwood: This trip was all my dad - all his dream. Ever since I could remember, my dad would talk about taking us out on the boat and taking us sailing around the world.

Jean: It was a very, very dark night and the moon hadn't come up. And I went down to my stateroom to relax, because it was the end of the evening and all of a sudden, we looked at my son, Ben, who just screamed "Reef."

Ben Silverwood: Just like a grinding noise. I couldn't see any land. We could sink at any moment.

Jean: The sounds were like microphone feedback in an auditorium where you have to cover your ears.

Amelia: That was when the whole boat started shaking.

Jean: We looked at each other with surprise and then we hit even harder. We're out in the middle of the Pacific [Ocean] and you just can't hit a reef.

Amelia: And then I hear stuff breaking and alarms start going off.

Jean: We came running up on deck - it was like mass hysteria. John and Ben ran up to cut the sails and put the engines into reverse. I instinctively ran down below to see how the kids were doing.

At that point in time, I turned to the sofa to see my two little kids hugging each other ... Jack and Camille, screaming, "I don't want to die. I don't want to die!"

Camille Silverwood: We just held each other. I was scared and sad.

Jean: I turned to look to my right and I saw this massive, huge wave come gushing through the right side of the boat through Amelia's room.

Plates and sneakers and toys are floating around in the galley. And I stood there and I just felt I was in a scene from the "Titanic." It was surreal.

I had no clue what to do. And that's where it really hit me; that we were in a situation where we were all gonna possibly die.

Jean Silverwood:: I just looked and I started thinking about drowning. And that's always been my worst fear, drowning. I used to have dreams when the kids were little about them drowning in a bathtub or even in a pool.

Amelia Silverwood: My parents were like, look, you need to buckle down. You need to get our position and get on the radios.

Jean: And in desperation we yelled, "Mayday, mayday, mayday."

Amelia: My mom was screaming you know, "Oh God... Jesus..." you know like, "How could this happen to us?"

Jean: The satellite phone was showing no signal. It was picking up no signal from the satellite and my hands were shaking so badly that I dropped the phone on the floor. By this time, the floor in the main salon is wet and I just picked up the phone and it was dead.

All that we had left was the emergency beacon the size of a small thermos. We switched it on and pointed it to the sky, but we didn't know if it was working.

TWO YEARS BEFORE THE WRECK

Jean: It was John's idea to sail around the world. From the time we met and we first had kids, he would say to me[sarcastically], "Come on honey. We can get the kids, all get on the boat and we'll sail around the world." And I was just like, "Oh sure. Yeah, OK honey, whatever you think. You know, we'll do it."

Ben Silverwood: [Mocking his father's speech] "Someday, were gonna go sail." Sure, yeah, that's gonna happen.

Jean: Ben had just turned 14. He's a surfer. He likes the ocean, he likes the water. He's a great swimmer, [a] typical southern California boy.

Ben: I planned to go to high school in San Diego.

Jean: Amelia's a ballet dancer. She was 12 when we started the trip. She loves to dance.

Amelia: I had horseback riding lessons, my dance lessons after school, and, of course, I hung out with friends. But I had a pretty busy life.

Jean: Jack was 9 years old when we began the journey. He is very different from the rest of my kids.

Ben: Me and Jack never really got along too well.

Jack Silverwood:Yeah, I fought with him a lot.

Jean: He's kind of like my nature boy.

Jack: I like to snorkel - go in and look at the tide pools and stuff like that and just like check out everything.

Jean: Camille is my little ... I never planned on having Camille around. She's like a little angel. She loves everything. She always has a big smile on her face. She was just 5 years old when the trip began.

Amelia: My mom, she always talks about my dad as like the fifth child.

Jean: I was attracted to my husband John mostly for his humor. And I thought he was really, really handsome. I mean, I love his big green eyes and we just had this physical attraction from the moment we met. It was really, really his dream in the beginning and I never would have thought to take the kids and go by myself on a sailboat!

But as time went by, and I realized I wasn't spending any time with the kids or with the family. There were all the distractions of modern day life - video games, school, sports, friends - then, at that point in time, it went from being a fantasy into a goal.

So John and I were in the real estate business. Luckily, we hit a very good housing market and we finally came to a point that we said, "Let's just go!" When we decided to go, I think we told the kids one by one that it was gonna happen. Of course Jack and Camille, they were excited. They were thrilled.

Camille Silverwood: I was excited to go to the islands and see all the new animals and everything.

Jean: Amelia, she was a little worried about leaving her friends, but she wasn't too upset about it. Now, Ben was a different circumstance. He did not want any part of this trip.

Ben: My friends were basically on the same line as I was. They were like, "Dude, that sucks!"

Jean: The first thing I said to him is, "This is your father's dream." He kinda came on board at that point. I knew that it took the help of me to get the whole thing together, because I'm the planner in the family and he's the dreamer.

Ben: My mom is very ... she has to have everything go to plan.

Amelia: She basically runs everyone's life, but in a good way.

Jean: I think I made this trip happen. John's birthday was coming up. So I decided to surprise him. And I bought tickets to the Miami boat show. We looked at several boats while we were down there and we found Emerald Jane.

THE SILVERWOODS SET SAIL IN 2003 | STAY AT SEA FOR MOST OF THE NEXT TWO YEARS

Jean: We made the boat like a home. We changed the cabins around so that each child had his own cabin and we put school desks in there for the two older ones. And we put some of the modern conveniences in the boat, like a microwave, washer and dryer, Xbox, all the things to make the kids happy and make the trip as pleasant as possible - especially in the beginning, because they had to get used to being on the boat. I basically took every precaution I could possibly take to make things safe.

GOOD TIMES DURING THE TRIP

Camille Silverwood: I remember seeing dolphins and angelfish.

Jean: I mean every single place that we visited the first time we'd drop anchor or hit the dock; it was like an adventure. We were all smiling that we're at someplace new and we'd have all these places to see and all these things to do and things to experience.

I never thought anything like what happened to us would happen.

Amelia Silverwood: I haven't ever heard of anyone getting a shipwreck before with a family and a boat like ours. And I was like, "So how could that ever happen to us? It's impossible."

THE NIGHT OF THE WRECK

Jean: I could hear this roar in the background and it was getting closer and closer and closer.

Amelia: The mistake that led to the wreck first took place earlier that day. We had a problem with the boom, which is connected to the mast. And so we had to get off course and we had to go into the wind and fix the boom. And I think that's what initially led to us getting closer to the reef and the currents taking us closer to the reef to the shipwreck.

Jean: The wave hits the boat with such force that the boat buckled and the mast - the 2,500-pound mast - just came flying down almost like a baton swirling and then I saw it come down on deck.

And I heard my husband, John, scream.

Jean Silverwood: I stood there frozen. I couldn't move. I couldn't feel. I'm not sure how long I stood there for, but when I came out of it I walked up on deck and I could see John underneath the mast. The mast came down, hit John and grazed my son Ben's head.

Jean: John was just screaming in pain.

Amelia: My mom starts screaming too and she's praying at the same time.

Ben Silverwood: I was really concerned about my dad.

Jean: The mast cut right through his leg.

Ben: You could see the bone sticking out.

Jean: His entire leg was hanging by a little tendon.

Ben: It was really hard to look at for the first couple seconds.

Jean: There was just blood covering the whole deck.

Ben: He was in real bad shape. I just started thinking about what I need to do ...

Jean: He found screwdrivers and ropes and tied a tourniquet on his leg.

Amelia: My mom was praying and Ben was praying. At the same time, they were trying to get this huge massive mast off of my dad's leg.

Jean: My son, Ben, finally said to me, "You know you can't get that mast off of him."

Amelia: No one knew what to do.

Jean: Gosh, I don't know what to do. I mean, I always know what to do.

Amelia: My dad's leg was basically gone. He was losing so much blood we didn't know when he was gonna die.

Jean: I started talking to God. "God, I'm not ready to go anywhere. There's still so much I want to do in life. If it's our time to go, then that's fine. But, if for some reason you can let us hang out here a little while longer, I'll make my life worthwhile."

TEN MONTHS BEFORE THE WRECK

Amelia: I was so over being on the boat with my family.

Jack Silverwood: You can't spend a lot of time with them or else you'll get really annoying.

Amelia: I felt really frustrated almost all the time. All I want to do is go home.

Jean: There were many challenges living on board a boat the size of an RV with your husband and four kids. My kids would fight a lot; John and I would fight a lot. We'd all be fighting and yelling at each other.

Ben: I was going crazy because I had nothing to do; wake up, eat breakfast, study a little bit, then sit around. I was really mad about it.

Jean: Ben would disappear off the boat and come back hours later and we'd be worried about where he went, but he'd have to get away from us.

Ben: There's a couple points where I lost my temper, to say the least. I threw stuff around the cabin, kicked the door open, ran all around the boat screaming and yelling and ripped a couple posters down my walls. I was starting to think that I'd be out there forever. I wouldn't ever go back home.

THE NIGHT OF THE WRECK

Jean: Ben was crying. He was standing over John, apologizing to him. "Dad, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry for the horrible things I did during the trip. You know, I'm so sorry. I love you."

Ben: I didn't want him to feel guilty that he'd brought me on that boat. I just wanted to comfort him.

Amelia: My dad would, you know, he'd bear the pain, but sometimes he'd scream.

Jean: It was horrible to watch somebody that you love go through that.

Amelia: He prayed for us the whole time; he never was praying for himself.

Jean: "Please help my wife and my kids survive this." He then asked me to bring the kids over to him. And he was kinda saying goodbye to them.

Amelia: He'd telling us that he's about to die.

Ben: I was pretty sure he was gonna die.

Camille Silverwood: I was sad to see if my dad was really gonna die or not or if we were gonna make it out.

Jean: My youngest daughter, Camille said, "I just want daddy to stop hurting." And an emotion came over me that was just unbelievable - to have my sweet daughter saying this to me.

I just thought in my mind, "Well we're not gonna say goodbye. We're gonna get you off the boat, we're gonna get ourselves off the boat. We're gonna try to do whatever we can."

COAST GUARD STATION | ALAMEDA, CALIFORNIA

Ernie Delli Gatti, Search and Rescue Controller, U.S. Coast Guard: The first emergency beacon signal that came in was approximately 10 p.m. Pacific Standard Time and it was registered to the Silverwoods who lived in San Diego, Calif.

We did not know their location. We did not know if they were in San Diego or where in the world that they were.

The first thing we did here is that we attempted to contact their home telephone number.

And when that failed, we started talking to the family members. They had told us that they had left Tahiti at least three to five days prior. They went ahead and told us that both John and Jean were experienced sailors and John would not turn on the beacon unless he was in some sort of emergency situation.

Jean: At that point, we just decided we were gonna try to get John out from underneath the mast. I got down on my back on the deck and put my legs underneath the mast and Ben stood in front of me and pulled at the same time. And we were just lucky enough that at that time, a wave hit the boat and made the boat shift enough and the mast shift enough on the coral that we were able to pull John free.

Ben was just finding little bits and pieces of whatever he could to keep the leg from bleeding.

Amelia: I got a bungee cord and I tied the bungee cord around above the knee.

Jean: It seemed to really, really stop the bleeding. I said, "Well, I gotta get the medical equipment," which I had down inside the stateroom, and Ben said, "No mom, you're not going in there. You can't go in there."

Ben: The whole underside of the boat was basically gone, so water was just shooting in. Parts of the boat were flying back and forth.

Jean: Well, that's ridiculous. Of course I'm gonna go down there and get it, because what are we gonna do with your father's leg? It's hanging by a little piece of tendon. Ben basically pulled me back - he physically pulled me back and said, 'You're not going down there."

I wasn't gonna listen to him. I started walking over to the cockpit to go down below, and as I did that this unbelievable monster wave came. If I was down there, I would either have been swept up by the boat, cut up by the windows or drowned.

I just remember Camille sitting there in the cockpit, her little angelic face looking straight ahead behind the wheel. She just looked at me and she said, "Mommy, if I go to heaven, will you come with me?"

John Silverwood There were dozens of reasons why I should have died that night. At the least, I could have drowned or bled to death. I owe my life to my family, especially my son, Ben.

The mast comes down and he comes over to his father and he tells me that he's gonna get me outta there.

Ben wraps that rope around me and he's so smart and he's so calm. He had pulled these big screwdrivers out and he used those screwdrivers to tighten down that rope and get the first tourniquet on my leg. And that was part of the first path to try to save my life.

Ben Silverwood: I don't really know how I knew what to do. All the first aid stuff I learned in Boy Scouts kind of just popped up into my head.

John: In those few seconds you took an adolescent with all the good and bad, the indecision, the crazy ideas and everything and fused it. In that one second, Ben became a man.

Jean Silverwood: Ben went up and he got the little kids.

Camille Silverwood: My older brother Ben would come over and say, "We're gonna be OK. We're gonna be OK."

Jean: Camille said to him, "What's gonna happen to all my stuffed animals and everything?" And he just thought to say to her, "You know, Camille, your stuffed animals are gonna be fine. They're gonna go with King Neptune and they're gonna be down in the ocean with all the fish and the king and everything." He went and got chocolate out of the refrigerator to make them feel better. He was so logical and so strong.

Amelia: I don't know what was going through Ben's mind at this point.

Ben: The boat was literally disappearing. I knew that we had to get off ...

Jean: It's just not safe to be on this boat anymore.

John : The night of the wreck wasn't the first time that my family saved me on this voyage. After 12 years of being sober, I drank again.

EIGHTEEN MONTHS BEFORE THE WRECK

John : I was getting a barrage of complaints from my wife. She didn't like all these different parts of the boat, everything would break down. The kids didn't like homeschooling, they wanted their friends, and they didn't like the weather. I felt my whole dream was falling apart. By the time we got to the Caribbean, it had just become overwhelming to me. And you know what? I reached for the bottle.

Amelia: I caught him drinking a lot of times.

Jean: When Amelia caught John drinking, she was very upset.

Amelia: I was mad, I was scared, I was disappointed - especially if he's sailing a boat. It's dangerous and my mom knew that, too, and they'd get in huge fights.

Ben: I've never seen him drunk before in my life. He stumbled and fell into the water.

Jean: I couldn't believe what I was seeing. I mean, here's somebody who's been sober for 10-plus years and now. You know, he's living his dream, but he's secretly drinking? It broke my heart. It just broke my heart.

John: I knew better. And somehow I had driven myself to it.

Amelia: He would talk about it to us and say how sorry he was about his drinking problem.

Jean: These kids all sat and listened to him intently.

John: The shock of what I had done in that one moment was overwhelming.

Amelia: I thought he was always perfect, but I just came to realize that he's not perfect. He's just like everyone else.

Jean: I knew that I wasn't ever going to live with an alcoholic again, so this trip was either going to end or things were going to change really quickly.

John: I knew it was wrong from the moment I lifted that bottle to my lips and it took me about six weeks, but I clawed my way back up.

Jean: Luckily he stopped, but it almost ended the trip.

SIXTEEN MONTHS AFTER JOHN 'S RECOVERY | THE NIGHT OF THE WRECK

John Silverwood: Ben never stopped. Ben was always thinking.

Amelia Silverwood: He's like, "Look, we need to get off this boat because it's collapsing, you know, different parts are breaking off. It's dangerous."

John: The boat was disintegrating. There was very little of it left and if he didn't get the little kids off, they were gonna die right there.

Amelia: Ben was looking at the reef, looking at the tides and the moon and all that stuff, trying to actually set up a plan.

John: He could see a piece of reef that was about the size of a twin mattress.

Ben Silverwood: I saw a little bit of reef at about 1:30 in the morning.

Jean Silverwood: There was a ledge. There was a little coral ledge probably about 100 feet away that he noticed had never been submerged.

John: He said, "I'm going in." He jumped off into the surf.

Ben: Timed it between waves and I basically bolted.

John: And when he did, he took a canister of flares and he took the distress signal with him.

Amelia: He's like, "I'll get some pillows, set up something on the sharp reef."

Ben: I got my little sister Camille and Amelia got Jack.

Jean: They brought the two little ones over to the reef.

John: Ben gave Jack the job of holding the emergency beacon. And little Jack held that thing tight to himself for the rest of the night. And you just wondered, "Is anybody gonna hear us, is anybody gonna know?"

COAST GUARD STATION | ALAMEDA, CALIFORNIA

Ernie Delli Gatti: It was between four and six hours before we got a clear signal on where their location was. The Emerald Jane was approximately 350 nautical miles west of Tahiti Papeete. It's desolated, there's nothing out there. The closest civilization is about maybe 10 to 12 miles away. We notified out counterparts down in Tahiti.

The French initially said they were going to launch a helicopter, but it wouldn't be until first light. They went ahead and launched their helicopters approximately 6 o'clock in the morning. Almost 12 hours had lapsed since the first emergency beacon had gone off. We did not know exactly what the extent of their injuries were, so we needed a jet to get out there quickly.

Jean: Ben was screaming and he said, "We gotta get dad off of here. You know the kids are fine, we gotta get dad off the boat." And I said, "Well how are we gonna do that?"

John: If they try to get me off the boat into the surf, I'll be dead in a heartbeat.

Jean: The life raft's stuck in between the two holes that have jackknifed together and we couldn't get that out; it was just like in there like a donut. He said, "I don't know. I don't know how we're gonna do that."

John: There's no way to get me off the boat, and Jean and Ben have to face the fact that maybe they've gotta cut their losses. They have to take care of the kids, because there's no way to save me.

Jean: We have to get this life raft off or else John's gonna die on this boat.

John: I was dying ... I could feel it.

Ernie Delli Gatti: We contacted our counterparts down there in Tahiti and pushed for a jet to take off immediately. It would be on scene within roughly 45 minutes and they would be able to be followed up with a helicopter in the event that there was a distress out there and they needed additional assistance.

John Silverwood: I'd lost almost three-fourths of my blood. I was in shock; my kidneys were gone and the rest of my organs were shutting down. The pain was unbearable. I knew I was dying.

Jean Silverwood: And I stood there and thought, "I'm gonna keep trying. We have to get this life raft off or John's gonna die on this boat."

Amelia Silverwood: My mom is trying to get the life raft out because we couldn't carry my dad just with our bare hands.

John: She's in a frenzy. She's determined to get this life raft out -- nothing will stop her.

Jean: I put my arms up on top of the railing of the boat and I just pushed and pushed and pushed with all my strength and I used every bit of effort that I could possibly use to try to get this life raft out and I couldn't do it.

John: She battles there for like half an hour. You know, she winds up cutting her legs on the stainless steel and everything else.

Jean: And then, just... it took sheer will, but I went back again.

John: And Ben finally comes out there with a hack saw blade he found and he is sawing through stainless steel and Jean frees this raft. And she gets the raft to the last corner of the boat where I'm marooned and the last thing I ever did was help them to slide me into that life raft.

Amelia: So we get the life raft. And we put my dad in it.

John: And they surf the life raft in up over the coral and get it into a tide pool, and then my daughter, Amelia, holds that life raft. She's in water up to her chest and she holds that life raft from these razor-sharp edges of the tide pool, and my wife puts both of the little kids in next to me. Jean slides in next to me because I'm shivering, I'm like out of control, my teeth are chattering and they wanna try to keep me warm, they're doing anything they can to keep me warm.

Amelia: When I was holding the life raft in the water, my mom is meanwhile pouring bloody cups of water out right beside me. I can hear these fish flapping in the water everywhere... I keep telling myself, I'm like "Oh well, I should be thinking about my dad. He's about to die you know." But at the same time, I'm like, "I am in the South Pacific. I am in the water... there could be sharks here."

Ben Silverwood: It was early, early morning, like pre-dawn. The sky was like a little bit pink and I saw this little kind of a star, but it was moving around on the horizon.

Jean: And then Ben screamed, "It's a plane! It's a plane!:

John: Ben takes the last of our big flares and he fires that flare.

Jean: And the plane just circled over and over us. I can't even describe the feeling of elation that came over me, because 5 minutes earlier, I was thinking of leaving John here to die and taking my kids to help us survive.

John: Ben's screaming, the kids are screaming. I can see Ben and his face came up over me... and he's got this big smile and he says, "Dad, we're gonna get you out of here man. They're coming."

Ernie Delli Gatti: The jet arrived on scene and we received the phone call here. The information was piecemeal at best. All the information they provided us was that they did find six Americans that were alive, and that one had sustained an injury. To what extent we did not know. Unfortunately, they were unable to land.

Ben: The plane flew around in circles, just around us, and I was kind of just thinking, "What's it doing, flying around in circles like that?"

John: What my wife and Ben and the kids couldn't know was that over the horizon, further than we could see, there was a little island.

The French search plane was trying to get a mom and dad and their 14 kids -- this family that lived there with no electricity, no running water, they were just subsistence fishermen -- to come and rescue us. But they were just waving up in the sky saying, you know, "Hi, great to see you."

And the French crew came up with a brilliant idea. They wrote message on a piece of paper and they rolled it up and they shoved it in a soda bottle and put a top on it. They flew down low and slow and right in front of their little hut on stilts where they live and they splashed the that bottle in the ocean there.

Jean: But then like three hours passed and there's still no helicopter.

Ernie Delli Gatti: Unfortunately it was gonna take another couple hours before the helicopter arrived on scene. Simply because they had to island hop and get gas at one of the other islands before they were able to proceed where the sailing vessel Emerald Jane was located.

Jean Silverwood: About 9:30 in this morning, this lopsided ... I thought it was a boat, and Amelia says to me, "Mom you're seeing things. It's a bird; it's not a boat coming." But it came closer and sure enough it was a boat.

Amelia Silverwood: My mom was kind of flipping out, because these people were on this little wooden boat coming out to save us.

John Silverwood: They have no medicine, they have no blood. And she's absolutely crushed, because this is the rescue?

Jean: Meanwhile, John's turning gray. He looks like he's not gonna make it.

About an hour later, we get over to their little settlement and his wife comes out to console me. She puts her arms around me and she's smiling. They have a big breakfast set up for us. They obviously didn't know that somebody was in critical condition.

John: Jean knew that I had, what, minutes or an hour left to live?

Jean: Like I'm saying, "Where's the doctor?" Finally, we went inside the hut and they had an old radio in there. Luckily the person spoke some English and I said, "You know, my husband is dying. Is a helicopter or something coming?

And he's like, "It's OK Mrs. Silverwood, somebody's coming. The helicopter is coming. They have to stop in Bora Bora to refuel and they'll get there by like 2 p.m." This is like 10:30 in the morning and I said, "He'll never make it until 2 p.m.

Jean Silverwood: It was about 12:30 in the afternoon and we could hear the sound of a chopper coming. And I was so elated I just grabbed Ben. I squeezed him. I hugged him. That's when I started crying. That was when I could at least let it go because I knew there was really some kind of help.

The helicopter landed [and] out came a diver, a doctor, a nurse and the pilot and co-pilot.

John Silverwood:And in that moment, I was overwhelmed. I was ecstatic, because I finally realized that my wife and my kids were safe.

Jean: And when I saw them give him the shot of morphine - even if he didn't make it, I just didn't want him to be in pain anymore.

And they put us all into the helicopter. They told us they were gonna bring us to Bora Bora, because that is as far as the helicopter could fly. Then they were going to transport John and I to the jet that had found us to take us to the hospital in Tahiti.

We were just like, "Hang on, you're almost there, we're almost there." And I said to him, "John, if you make it through this, I'll never argue with you again (laughs). And that is what I said to him before he went into surgery.

John: The first member of my family that I saw was my wife Jean. It was like I was meeting her for the first time - like every part of her face and the way that she smiled and then she held my hand.

Jean: I had never felt like this before - like it was so good to be alive, it was so good to have my family. I mean, things couldn't have been any better.

And I didn't care if they amputated his leg. I mean it was just like, as long as he is living, I mean that's what matters.

John: What a small thing a leg is compared to my family living. You know, it meant nothing; it didn't occur to me, it didn't occur to me to worry about my leg.

Camille Silverwood : I was like, "Hey, what happened to your leg?" And he said, "Well I got a new one and this one's even better. It's robotic." I was thinking, "Well it's very cool. It's kind of like a robot leg."

Amelia Silverwood: Now we'll be walking [me and my dad] and he'll have shorts on and he doesn't care about showing off his leg. I think he kind of likes it (laughs).

John: The shipwreck brought us closer as a family, and, it's the kind of thing that will endure. I'm immensely proud of my children. I'm prouder of my children than I can put into words.

Ben Silverwood: My relationship with my father definitely has grown because of this trip. We are a lot closer now.

Amelia: Because we pulled together so much during the shipwreck and the whole accident, I think that I can do that in my life -- even when I don't think I can. The experience definitely made me stronger as a person and helps me to believe that I can do almost anything.

John: And then the Admiral gives me the medal of bravery. I was just trying to stay alive. We are just so thankful. Those brave search and rescue people put their lives on the line for us.

Jean: I've learned from this experience that my family is unbelievably strong. We have an unbelievable bond together.

Would I ever go sailing again? Yes, I absolutely, I would. And if I do go, I'm gonna stay out of places like remote areas of the South Pacific (laughs).

The Silverwoods have written a book about their experiences called "Black Wave." Click here to read an excerpt.

John Silverwood has bought another sailboat. He plans to sail it to from California to Hawaii with his son Jack.

Jean and the rest of the family will stay ashore for that one.

Created by Judy Tygard
Produced by Chuck Stevenson, Chris Young, Gregory F. McLaughlin, Doreen Schechter, Joan Adelman and Pete Shaw