Moxie's Harrowing Story of Almost Drowning

So how did you learn how to do all this stuff? Was it trial by fire? When you're learning how to use all this, I mean, I don't want to call it ancient equipment, but mechanical equipment to figure out how to... Yeah. Yeah, secret is to begin. To start. Yeah, I mean, so... Like a sextant. Where the fuck does one learn how to operate a sextant and then navigate in the ocean? Yeah, just I would... You know, I started... You know, me and some friends got a boat and we started fixing it up and making a lot of mistakes and then, you know, started taking some trips and then... Getting lost? Yeah, I got lost a bunch. I took a solo trip from San Francisco to Mexico and back on a little 27-foot boat with no engine. And that's when I really... How long did that take? Ah... A few months. And the way you did it, did you stay close so I could see the shore, so if everything fucks up, I can kind of swim. Yeah, well, no, you can't swim. I learned that lesson too. No? Why? It's... I mean, the closest I ever came to death in my life was just in the bay. In the San Francisco Bay, I was on a boat that capsized and I was probably 2,000 yards away from shore. And... I almost drowned. And I mean, I did make it to shore. And... Yeah, it's just the water's so cold, you know? You didn't make it to shore? No, yeah, it's a long story. I was like... 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 off the shore in this area that no one cares about. And you can just sort of experiment with this little boat. And so he started looking on Craig's list and he found this boat that's for sale for $500 up in... Up in the North Bay. And 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 unable to take your call, you know? And we were like, what is that, like honorary? It's not a 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 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, you know? Oh, boy. And you know, this guy comes out and he's like, oh yeah, this is the trailer. We were gonna do a metal run, but if you want the boat, you know, we'll take the metal off, you know? And we're like, okay. And he's like taking us around. He's like, okay, the mast is over here. And it's like under some leaves, you know? And it's like, and then, you know, the hull is in the water here. 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, 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 of this thing, you know, and my friend who knows nothing about boats is like, all right, Moxie, like, what do you think? You know, 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. Honorary self-declared doctor. Can you can do that? I guess so. Why not? He'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. Did Hunter S. 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 trick. Hunter S. Thompson for a while. Edward Benaise did the same thing. Well, Bill Cosby became a doctor for a little bit. They took it back, though. That's when you know he fucked up. They take back your fake doctor degree. So this guy was like, you know, my friend's like, what do you think, Moxie? All right, 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 a minimal to that, you know, so we've gone from like, you know, 500 dollars to free. And so we got this boat, you know, and it was. So we had to deal with the metal and all this stuff. We got the boat and we were just trying to do like a little. We're just trying to anchor it. Did you bring life vests? Yeah, I was wearing a PFD type type two 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, we're just doing this little thing, this little maneuver. And we were in two boats. I built this little wooden rowing boat and my friend was going to go out in that with one anchor and I was going to sail out the belt. Yeah, I've applied what is the stitching glue. Yeah. And but it, you know, not the sturdiest vessel. And so, you know, he's going to go out in this little rowboat and I was going to sail out this this little catamaran and we had two anchors and we're anchoring and then we're going to get in the rowboat and row back. And it seemed a little windy. 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 is way, way too much for what we were trying to do. But I had misrigged part of the boat, so it took me a while to get it turned around. And by the time I got it turned around, my friend had rode out 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, shit. And I was like, I'm on this little hobby 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. You know, we're unprepared. It's starting to get dark. We don't have a light. And I'm sailing back and forth trying to like help my friend. And it got to the point where I was like, all right, I'm just going to tack over. I'm going to sail up to this boat that was called the Sea Louse. Sail up to the sea louse. I'm going to get my friend off of it. We're just going to abandon it. And then we're going to sail this hobby cat back if we can. And so I go to turn around and right as I'm turning around, 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 and the next moment you're in the water, you know. And the water is like 50 degrees, like super. It like is a shock, you know, and hits him. And the boat was a little messed up in a way where it I couldn't write it. It capsized and then the whole it capsized all the way in and sank. So it was floating like shit, like, you know, three feet underwater, basically. 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. 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, it's just you can't hear each other, you know, just takes your takes your voice away. And he just I mean, I was screaming, I was waving. He wasn't wearing his glasses and he just very slowly rode away. Oh, my God. And so then I was just like floating there. I was starting to get dark. You know, he rode away. Did he notice that your boat capsized? No, he didn't even see me. He thought that I just sailed somewhere else, you know, because in his mind, he was I was the person with the experience. You still talk to this dude? Yeah, all the time. I feel like you motherfucker. 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. Sail 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 the wind was blowing directly offshore. So you have to swim, you know, swim into the wind, into the wind wave and all that stuff. And eventually I tried swimming and I swam, you know, directly upwind. And I was because I was I was like, OK, 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. So I was trying to go directly upwind so that if I felt like I couldn't make it, I would float back down when I 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 freedive, you know, stuff. And I just, you know, it's like you read these stories about 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 bay? 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, shit. 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 going to 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, you know, 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 eventually I realized I wasn't going to make it to shore. I look 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 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, and that that feeling that you're sort of longing for is not actually the feeling that you want, you know. And I just barely got the end of a rope that was trailing off the back of the hull, pull myself back on it almost threw up. Then I had to then I was just floating there with the with the hull, you know, three feet underwater. I tied myself to it. I started to get tunnel vision. And really, at the last minute, I tugboat started 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. 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 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 tigers, like tigers usually 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. And I was like, all I have to do is stick my leg out and push against the hull of the boat, you know, to like go around the tires. And I couldn't do it. And I knew and I could barely see and they like swung me around and eventually pulled me up, they like put me in next to the engines in the engine room. I couldn't, you know, I couldn't even feel the heat. 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 and, you know, he's like, so is this is this your first time sailing? And I 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, and I was like, no, I have a master's license. And he was like, what? You're a fucking 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 costs all for free. Spotify is absolutely free. 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