It's Christmas Day, 1996, 1400 miles from land deep in the southern ocean. 35-year-old marine turned yotsman, Pete Goss,

is nearly two months into the world's toughest sailing race,

the Vondet Globe.

And right now, the storm is whipping up around him. A powerful swell

churns the dark waters, stretching the waves into hills that quickly become mountains.

Twisting turbulent winds spin Pete's boat and lash it with spray.

The gusts are well over 70 miles per hour.

It's hard to breathe through the salty bluster.

Pete is no stranger to terrifying tempests,

but this one is especially sinister.

Every storm is different, but this particular storm just didn't feel good.

Forty, fifty, sixty knots of wind, and I could only just keep up with the sail changes.

I mean the boat got knocked down, imagine a big breaking wave the size of a three or four

story building knocking it on its side. So it's pretty wild.

Pete scrambles below deck, but as the boat pitches and yours,

there is a violent bump, and he's thrown into the ceiling.

Another huge impact shudders through the hull and he's catapulted onto the chart table.

There's water slopping around the boat, tools and equipments strewn everywhere.

It's a nautical nightmare. And then, amid the chaos, a high-pitched alarm suddenly screeches out.

It's coming from the on-board satellite system.

I wasn't sure what it was.

I worked my way across the boat, kind of wedged myself down, called up the message to find it was a

...