Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWIFwVBegBc
the jurogan experience so how did you learn how to do all this stuff was it trial by fire were you learning how to use all this i mean i don't call it ancient equipment but mechanical equipment to figure out yeah yeah secret is to begin just start yeah i mean so sexton where the [ __ ] does one learn how to operate a sextant and then navigate in the ocean uh yeah just i would you know i started uh you know me and friends got a boat and um we started fixing it up and making a lot of mistakes and then you know started taking some trips and then i lost yeah i got a lot of lunch i took a solo trip from san francisco to mexico and back uh on a little 27-foot boat with no engine and whoa how long did that take a few months yeah and the way you did it did you stay close so i can see the there's the shore so if everything [ __ ] up i can kind of swim yeah well no you can't swim uh i learned that lesson too no why it's um i mean the closest i ever came to death in my life i was just in the bay in the san francisco bay i was on a boat that capsized and um i was probably 2000 yards away from shore and uh i almost drowned and i i mean i didn't make it to shore and um yeah it's just the water so cold you know you didn't make it to shore no yeah it's a long story i was like um i a friend of mine was living in san francisco and he wanted to learn how to sail and i was like you know what you should do is you should get like a little boat like a little sailing thing you know and then you can just anchor it like off the shore in this area that no one cares about and you know you can sort of experiment with this little boat and so he started looking on craigslist and he found this photos for sale for 500 bucks up in uh up in the north bay and uh every time we called the phone number we got an answering machine that was like hello you've reached dr
ken thompson honorary i'm only unable to take your call you know and we were like what is that like honorary fake doctor is he like a judge a chiropractor you know like what is it yeah and so finally we got in touch with this guy we go up there and it's this the kind of situation where like we pull up and there's like the trailer that the boat's supposed to go on and it's just full of scrap metal and you know and you know this guy comes out he's like oh yeah this is the trailer um we were gonna do a metal run but if you want the boat you know we'll take the the metal off you know and we're like okay you know and he's like taking us around he's like okay the mast is over here and it's like under some leaves and you know it's like and then you know the hole is in the water here in and it's he has like a dock behind his house and the tide is all the way out so the boat's just sitting in the mud you know and i'm like well how do we get this out of here he's like oh you'd have to come back at a different time uh you know and then you take it over there and we're like you told us to come now like at this time you know what anyway so we go through all this thing you know and any and you know my friend who knows nothing about votes it's like all right moxie like what do you think should i get this and i was like okay oh and we were like so what's you know doctor of what he's like oh self-declared you know we're like oh okay he's a self-declared doctor honorary self-declared doctor you can do that i guess that why not it's just an answer jamie yes doctor yes i think we should become doctors i just became one i tried that for a while actually yeah did you really yeah i don't know i mean i never went to college though did hunters thompson ever get an honorary degree or did he just call himself dr hunter's thompson because he was calling himself doctor same trick same thing well bill cosby became a doctor for a little bit they took it back though that's you know you [ __ ] up yeah yeah
yeah they take back your fake doctor degree yeah so this guy was like you know my friend's like what do you think maxine i'm like alright dr ken i would have to consider i'm not sure that i would do it but i would consider taking this boat for free i'd have to think about it but i would consider that you know and he's like i might be minimal to that you know so we've gone from like you know 500 to free uh and so we got this boat you know and it was something we had to do with the metal and all this stuff we got the boat and um we were just trying to do like a little um we're just trying to anchor it did you bring life vests yeah i was wearing a a pfd yeah type 2 pfd and we took it we took it to this boat ramp and it was the end of the day and the wind was blowing kind of hard and the conditions weren't that good but i was like oh we're just doing this little thing this little maneuver and we were in two boats i built this little wooden uh rowing boat uh and my friend was going to go out in that with one anchor and i was going to sail out yeah out of plywood it's stitching glue but yeah and but it you know not the sturdiest vessel so uh and so you know he's gonna go out in this little row boat and i was gonna sail out this uh this little catamaran and we had two anchors and we're gonna anchor and we're gonna get in the row boat and roll back and um it seemed a little windy and you know i got in the boat first and i got out around this pier and was hit by the full force of the wind and realized that it was blowing like 20 knots was way way too much for what we were trying to do but i had mis-rigged part of the boat so it took me a while to get it turned around um and by the time i got it turned around my friend had rode out um around the pier and he got hit by the force of the wind and just got blown out
into the bay so he's rowing directly into the wind and moving backwards oh [ __ ] out of the bay and i was like [ __ ] and i'm on this little hobie cat and it was moving so fast like it was way too windy to be sailing this thing i've got just my clothes on i don't have a wetsuit on or anything like that i have a life jacket and just my clothes and we don't have a radio we you know we're unprepared it's starting to get dark we don't have a light um and i'm sailing back and forth trying to like help my friend uh and it got to the point where i was like all right i'm just gonna tack over i'm gonna sail up uh to this boat that was called the sea laos sail up to the sea laos i'm gonna get my friend off of it we're just gonna abandon it and then we're gonna sail this hobie cat back if we can and so i go to turn around and right as i'm turning around a gust of wind hit the boat and capsized it before i could even know that it was happening you know just it's just like you just it's one moment you're on the boat the next moment you're in the water you know and the water was like 50 degrees um like super uh it like is a shock you know it hits you and the boat was a little messed up in a way where it i couldn't write it uh it capsized and then the whole it capsized all the way in and sank and so it was floating like [ __ ] like you know three feet under water basically um and so i'm in the water but i'm like still i'm like a little bit out of the water but like in the water and you know i had a cell phone that just immediately was busted um and i look at my friend and he's a ways away now and he didn't see me and i was you know yelling as loud as i could but the wind is blowing 20 knots and it just you know just you can't hear each other you know just takes your takes your voice away and um he just i mean i was screaming i was waving he wasn't wearing his glasses
uh and he just very slowly rode away oh my god and so then i was just like floating there was starting to get dark um you know he rode away did he notice that your boated cap's eyes no he didn't even see me he he thought that i just sailed somewhere else you know because in his mind he was i was the person with the experience do you still talk to this dude yeah all the time yeah i feel like you [ __ ] i don't blame him in his mind he was the person that was in trouble right you know and i understand and he thought i just sailed somewhere else but that's crazy yeah sailed out of vision yeah and then you know it basically got dark i could see the shore it wasn't far away there's nobody on shore there's nobody around and um the wind was blowing directly offshore so you have to swim you know swim into the wind uh into the wind wave and all that stuff and um eventually i tried swimming and i swam you know directly upwind and i was because i was i was like okay like if i get separated from this boat and i don't make it to shore then i'm definitely dead you know like there's just no saving me uh so i was trying to go directly upwind so that if i felt like i couldn't make it i would float back down one and hit the boat again and so i tried you know i swam for probably like 20 minutes upwind and made no progress it didn't feel like any progress you know my you know in 50 degrees you have 30 to 60 minutes before you black out my arms were just you know it's like i consider myself a strong swimmer like i free dive you know stuff and i just you know it's like you read these stories about uh how people die you know of just like they succumb to hypothermia on a local hike or they drown in the bay you know and the story is always like well timmy was a strong swimmer but he and you're like really was timmy really a strong swimmer because he drowned in the bed you know and like floating there you know it just all came to me i'm like wow this is how
this happens you know you just make a series of pretty dumb small decisions until you find yourself like floating in the dark in the bay there's no one around oh [ __ ] and it's a really slow process too you know it's like it's not like you know you just come to terms with the idea that like you're not gonna make it and it's not it's not sudden it's not like someone shot you or you got hit by a bus or something like that it's like this hour long thing that you're getting dragged through all alone and you realize like no one will ever even know what this was you know how this happened and you think about all the people like joshua slocum jim gray people who are lost at sea and you realize they all had this thing that they went through this hour-long ordeal of just floating alone and no one will even ever know what that was or what that was like you know and uh eventually i realized i was gonna make it short i looked back the boat was like way far away from me i started you know drifting back towards it i was still trying to swim i realized at some point that i wasn't going to hit it i wasn't going to hit the boat on the way back downwind and i had to just give it all that i had to try to connect with the boat you know to stop myself from getting blown past it and in that moment too you realize that like uncertainty is the most unendurable condition you know that like you imagine yourself making it to shore and relaxing you know just knowing that it's resolved right and in that moment of like i might not make it back to this boat you're you're like tempted to give up because it's the same resolution you know it's the feeling of just knowing you know the uncertainties have been resolved you know and you have to really remind yourself that it's not the same you know that like you have to give it everything you have in order to survive you know that that feeling that you're
sort of longing for is not actually the feeling that you want you know uh and i just barely got the the end of a rope that was trailing off the the back of the hole pulled myself back on it almost threw up um then i had to then i was just floating there with the with the hole you know three feet underwater i tied myself to it um i started to get tunnel vision and really at the last minute um ice a tugboat uh started uh coming through the area and it was coming straight at me actually and i i realized that it probably just wouldn't even see me it would just run me over and not even know that i had been there you know it's totally possible um and i was just you know i was trying to like wave i could barely lift my arm i was trying to scream i could barely make any noise and somehow they saw me and uh they they like it took them like 15 minutes to like get a rope around me and they started pulling me up the side of the boat and it was like lining every tugboat is um tires like tires usually um as like a fender you know and i got like wedged in the tires as they were like pulling me up and i knew what was happening you know and i was like all i have to do is stick my leg out and push against the whole of the boat you know to like go around the tires and i couldn't do it wow uh and i knew and i could barely see and they like swung me around and eventually pulled me up they like put me in uh next to the engines in the engine room i couldn't you know i couldn't even feel the heat uh and they called the coast guard and the coast guard came and got me it was like really embarrassing and the coast guard like you know the coast guard guys like you know he's like god these blankets over me he's like trying to like talk to me to like keep me like alert you know and uh and you know he's like so is this is this your first time sailing and i have like a commercial like a 250
ton like master's license you know like it's like you need 600 days at sea to get this license you know uh and i was like no i i have a master's license and he was like what i think you're a [ __ ] idiot man you know like everything changed the tone totally changed you know oh my god dude that's insane catch new episodes of the joe rogan experience for free only on spotify watch back catalog jre videos on spotify including clips easily seamlessly switch between video and audio experience on spotify you can listen to the jre in the background while using other apps and can download episodes to save on data cost all for free spotify is absolutely free you don't have to have a premium account to watch new jre episodes you just need to search for the jre on your spotify app go to spotify now to get this full episode of the joe rogan experience