A woman who survived a shipwreck revealed how she escaped the sharks that ate her friend.
Tamara Ennis lived through something most people could only experience in their nightmares.
It began when the 21-year-old sailed a mile from the shore of Ormond Beach, Florida, in August 1981 with friends, Randy Cohen, Christy Wapniarski and Daniel Perrin, the boat’s owner.
All four were on a 17-foot catamaran, when Tamara revealed to A&E on its YouTube survivor series that she noticed dark clouds and lightning closing in on them.
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Having decided that they were ‘too late’ to leave the situation, the group endeavoured to stay and ‘wait it out’.
However, not fifteen minutes later, a pontoon filled with water and the boat flipped over.
Thankfully, they were all able to climb onto the hull and draw their knees up, saving their bathing suit-clad bodies from the shark-infested water.
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Tamara said of that moment that the coast guard didn’t spot them floating in the sea and left them sitting alone and in need of saving: "The reality hit us, and we were just quiet. And Christy who was sitting in front of me, she was very quiet, and I could tell also that she was just making peace, and I had a sense that she knew she was gonna die.”
After dawn broke, Tamara told the group that the best chance they had was to start swimming, and as Christy was the only person who could not swim, she told her that salt water would allow her to float when things became difficult.
Tamara then led the group into the water, but an hour into the swim, Christy was attacked by a shark.
She told A&E: “I was up in front and it was only probably about an hour into the swim that I looked back and I heard, um, Christy screaming and yelling for Randy to come get her.”
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Tamara believed she was drowning at first, until the telltale sign of a shark throwing her out of the water before dragging her back underneath the surface became apparent.
She continued: “I realised I saw her thrashing about in the water. And then she went straight up, just like in the movie, in the Jaws movie, when she went straight up and straight back into the water. And I knew she’d been hit by a shark.
“So I yelled to Randy that it was a shark, and he thought she was drowning. So he was yelling back to her, and you know, calling her name, and she was just screaming ‘come and get me now’ and she went up again and down.
She continued: “And he was swimming while this happened and he didn’t see that it was a shark. He just thought she was drowning. So the last time I saw her go up and down she just went face down into the water. I knew that, you know, I knew she was dead. She was completely pale, completely white, I knew she’d lost all her blood.”
Tamara decided she would not go back, for fear of being the shark’s next victim, and she instead continued to swim.
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However, soon after, something bumped against her and she was horrified to realize it was a shark.
She said: “I just had a split second vision of Christy and me saying, 'That’s not how I wanna go. There is no way I can die like this'.”
To combat her fear, she said she began to think like a fish, telling herself she had as much right to be in the water as the shark did.
After five hours of swimming, Tamara could no longer see Randy and Daniel and had to navigate the currents after seeing sharks ahead in a ‘feeding frenzy’.
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She also battled against a rip-tide which separated her from the shore.
Thankfully, swimming sideways allowed her to break the tide, which is when a lifeguard saw her.
She said: “I just told him instinctively – 'I’ve just swam about nine miles, there’s a boat out there, one person’s dead. And there are a couple of guys and I don’t know if they are dead or alive'.”
Thankfully, both men were rescued and all three were sent to the hospital for treatment, as dehydration, exposure and hypothermia took hold of members of the group.
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The body of Christy was never found.
Despite her nightmare out at sea, Tamara has since decided to work on boats in the Bahamas.
She said: “I still to this day won’t go in dark water but surviving that also gives you a whole new outlook on life.
“Dying wasn’t an option for me during that time so I just had to keep good thoughts and say, 'Ok, I’ve made it another minute, I made it another five minutes, I made it another hour.' And just keep going and thinking about, you know, your family, or your future, and not giving in to the negative thoughts is how I survived.”
Britt Jones