Media Madness: The two sailors 'rescued' at sea after 50 days? Finally, here's the kinky

SAN FRANCISCO – SF seems as appropriate a dateline as any for this story, given what the UK's Daily Mail has just revealed in an article entitled, "Truth about the bungling yachtswomen 'lost at sea for five months' - one was crash-prone 'kinky sailor' who paid for trip by working as a dominatrix - and the other had never sailed at all (and now they're planning to write a book)."

Well, the book part doesn't surprise your Ed. nor, I'm sure, any of our Dear Readers who have even a modicum of experience sailing offshore. But the rest of the story?

Some of you will find it hilarious, some of you will not be amused in the least, and some will be asking, LOL, "Why didn't they invite me along for the trip!" One of your Ed.'s waggish friends has suggested that the real story, at least the part on land, is way better than the fishy story they obviously concocted about their supposed 50 days lost at sea.

Pity the U.S. Navy who were sucked into this madness in the first place, by giving the two and their "boys" (as they repeatedly call their dogs who were with them on the 50' yacht) a hero's welcome aboard the USS ASHLAND fit for a returning astronaut, and arranging a self-congratulatory (for the Navy) press conference via conference call for media from Hawaii to New York and beyond. Earlier today your Ed. listened to some of it, and couldn't help laughing out loud at several of their absurd assertions.

One of those apocryphal assertions was that Jennifer Appel had built the boat herself over the last two-and-a-half years. Sailing Illustrated can now reveal that it's simply another fabrication (the story, not the yacht), thanks to good friend and fellow St. Francis YC member Mike Ratiani. I wasn't even going to bother posting all this, but here we are, so WTH. Earlier this week Mike emailed:

My brother, Father and I built that [Ms Appel's now infamous SEA NYMPH] boat! In 1979 we bought a Morgan-designed Starret 45 hull with deck, keel, floor boards, bulkheads and most of the things that make a boat a boat, from Florida and shipped it all to San Diego where we built it out so we could sail it to Hawaii.There, we finished out the interior more nicely and sailed her around the Hawaiian islands for about 10 years until we sold her. Great ocean going boat.

A quick search of USCG documented vessels shows that this is indeed our old boat! The USCG search shows the same vessel documentation number and manufacturer info/ vessel ID for the SEA NYMPH that was stamped on the transom of our boat.

So we built it, not Ms Appel. It's sad to see that the current owners don't appreciate a well-built, seaworthy yacht enough to actually learn how to properly put to sea in her....We had nothing to do with her after 1988.

When we had her she was named DAWN TREADER from the CS Lewis Narnia Chronicles. She was a true family project and quite special. We cruised around the Hawaiian islands extensively and my Dad and I took charterers around the islands for several years out of Waikiki Yacht Club. We were WYC members then. We had a lot of fun with that yacht! I can’t bear to share this with my parents though as they are pretty sentimental about the old days as they age.

This was a Charlie Morgan design. As I recall it was his last boat designed just at the end of the old CCA rule with a barn door rudder. As soon as the world changed to the next best thing, IOR, the style was more or less obsolete and two guys in Florida bought the molds and tried to sell some cruising boats. We chose the kit boat option so our family could all be involved. Learned a lot and had fun together. Those were the days!

Pity, also, the Today Show who put these two fakers on live yesterday morning with host and self-proclaimed boater Matt Lauer He fed them mostly softball questions while, at least at times, raising a skeptical eyebrow at their stupid (and worse) story.

And congrats, again, to Dawn Riley who once again lowered the boom on Dumb and Dumber in an interview yesterday that Dawn did with HLN, after tearing their story to shreds early last week on HLN, and again in a Take Five with TFE on Sailing Illustrated last Wednesday.

I debated whether to post any of the salacious, almost NSFW Daily Mail photos, but I'll leave that to Sailing Anarchy. Besides, if you really must, you can see them all on dailymail.com here, and on this Daily Mail video report....

According to the UK's Daily Mail, this is Ms Appel's former yacht, the FSOW, that she wrecked in Hawaii in 2012.