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Open Water 2: Adrift

2006, Mystery & thriller, 1h 35m

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Open water 2: adrift   photos.

Six long-time friends (Susan May Pratt, Richard Speight Jr., Niklaus Lange) try to stay afloat in the ocean after they forget to lower the ladder from a luxury yacht.

Rating: R (Nudity|Language|Some Violence)

Genre: Mystery & thriller

Original Language: English

Director: Hans Horn

Producer: Dan Maag , Philip Schulz-Deyle

Writer: Adam Kreutner , David Mitchell

Release Date (Streaming): Nov 20, 2009

Runtime: 1h 35m

Production Co: Orange Pictures GmbH & Co. KG

Cast & Crew

Susan May Pratt

Richard Speight Jr.

Niklaus Lange

Cameron Richardson

Wolfgang Raach

Amy's Father

Kelly Wagner

Adam Kreutner

David Mitchell

Philip Schulz-Deyle

Stephan Barth

Executive Producer

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Eye For Film >> Movies >> Adrift (2006) Film Review

Adrift

Reviewed by: Jennie Kermode

When one reveals that one works as a film critic, people always say that it must be a wonderful job. Sometimes it's more of a public service. People like me go to see films like Adrift so that people like you don't have to.

Adrift is the story of a group of six former college friends who meet up to celebrate a birthday aboard a luxury yacht. Some miles out into the ocean, four of them decide to go for a swim. Young mother Amy declines, terrified of water after a traumatic incident in her childhood. In an attempt to cure her fear, loudmouth Zach grabs hold of her and dives overboard with her. As he forgets to let down the ladder before doing so, the six then find themselves stranded in the water, unable to get back aboard. And that's pretty much it.

Copy picture

With so many characters, we know from the start that they're not all going to make it, but the ways in which they manage to come to grief are almost as ridiculous as their inability to use the many simple methods available for regaining access to the boat (it would help if they were a little less stupid - letting the heaviest guy climb up something which he's already torn once is really imbecilic, as is throwing things away when they fail to be of use on the first attempt). One of them gives up and swims away, looking for help, much like several of the critics in my press screening. One cannot help but long for them to hurry up and drown and get it over with.

Aiming to fill the 90 odd minutes which will make this (at least look like) a feature film, the scriptwriters have the stranded characters engage in what might have been supposed to be soul-searching discussion, with awkward revelations and macho stand-offs aplenty, yet despite this almost all the characters are underdeveloped. Only Susan May Pratt convinces, as Amy, though Ali Hillis works impressively hard with the fewest lines of all. Cameron Richardson's Michelle is never allowed to be anything more than a dumb blonde, giving the impression that even the writers don't care about these people. It's difficult for anyone else to care when they do nothing but whine and pointlessly make their situation worse. If you can't find anything better to do with an hour and a half than watch this film, you might as well go and drown yourself.

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Director: Hans Horn

Writer: Adam Kreutner, Collin McMahon

Starring: Susan May Pratt, Richard Speight Jr., Niklaus Lange, Ali Hills, Cameron Richardson, Eric Dane, Mattea Gabarretta

Runtime: 95 minutes

Country: Germany

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Open Water 2: Adrift

Cast & crew.

Susan May Pratt

Richard Speight Jr.

Niklaus Lange

Cameron Richardson

  • Average 4.4

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Open Water 2 : Adrift

Where to watch

Open water 2 : adrift.

2006 ‘Open Water 2: Adrift’ Directed by Hans Horn

Fatigue. Hypothermia. Death.

A weekend cruise on a luxurious party yacht goes horribly wrong for a group of old high-school friends when they get stuck in the water many miles from shore and a happy reunion turns into a fight for survival.

Susan May Pratt Eric Dane Richard Speight Jr. Niklaus Lange Ali Hillis Cameron Richardson

Director Director

Assistant director asst. director.

Hendrik Holler

Producers Producers

Philip Schulz-Deyle Dan Maag Hendrik Holler

Executive Producer Exec. Producer

Stephan Barth

Writers Writers

Adam Kreutner David Mitchell

Original Writer Original Writer

Kôji Suzuki

Casting Casting

Nancy Nayor Kelly Wagner

Editor Editor

Christian Lonk

Cinematography Cinematography

Bernhard Jasper

Production Design Production Design

Visual effects visual effects.

Sebastian Faber

Stunts Stunts

Wolfgang Raach

Composer Composer

Gerd Baumann

Sound Sound

Alexander Buck Guido Zettier Emil Klotzsch

Peter Rommel Productions Orange Pictures UFA Shotgun Pictures

Primary Language

Spoken languages.

English French German Spanish

Releases by Date

10 jul 2006, 03 aug 2006, 09 aug 2006, 10 aug 2006, 18 aug 2006, 07 sep 2006, 28 sep 2006, 20 feb 2007, 27 jun 2007, 28 feb 2007, 02 sep 2008, releases by country.

  • Physical DVD
  • Theatrical 12
  • Theatrical 15

Netherlands

  • Physical 12 DVD
  • TV 12 RTL 7
  • Theatrical M/14
  • Theatrical R

94 mins   More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

Popular reviews

soupydoupyy

Review by soupydoupyy ★★ 6

About 4 years ago I ran into my Aunt Linda at a family event. Naturally, I made the conversation about movies. "Have you seen any good ones lately?", I asked. Immediately she told me of a movie about people trapped in the ocean because they forgot to put the ladder down of their yacht. "It's a sequel to a big movie, but it doesn't really have anything to do with the first one", she said....."That's a good sign", I thought as I rolled my eyes. "Is it Open Water 2?" "Yes! You NEED TO SEE IT!" I said I would try and see it, without really wanting to. As the years went by my Aunt Linda would ask if I…

Olivia

Review by Olivia ★

the heteros have done it again

neve

Review by neve ★

why did no one get on someone’s shoulders until 1 hour and 18 minutes into the film ??? like ??? that would be my first thought ???

Asim P.

Review by Asim P. ★½

the sharks be like “ I think we’ll sit this one out”

nyloraced ✨

Review by nyloraced ✨ ★★

All this nonsense because they forgot to put down a ladder?????

alibrarianslib

Review by alibrarianslib ★★ 1

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

One of the chick's had a freaking life vest. My first thought is "Hmmmm, why don't we put the life vest on a dude and have a girl stand up on his back and grab the railing."

No one should have died.

✯ Miloš⑬ 💀↯

Review by ✯ Miloš⑬ 💀↯ ★★★★

It's about a group of friends jumping into the water from their boat, forgetting to lower the ladder, realizing they're too far up, and getting stuck in the water many miles from shore.

I get that viewers found the characters annoying, but honestly, the idea of the movie is pretty exciting to see what will happen. I enjoy the atmosphere and the mid-2000s film editing, with the ending giving me goosebumps. It took me a moment to realize that the driver was played by Eric Dane, lol.

Overall, I think it's an exciting horror/thriller without any sharks, with solid acting and tons of enjoyable moments.

Blaze the Action Junkie

Review by Blaze the Action Junkie ★★½

Promotions claim this film is based on actual events. This is false according to Google. The actual script is an adaptation of Koji Suzuki's short story Adrift, a piece of fiction. It matters little to me, most of the film's stress is centered on a mother stuck in the water just out of reach of her screaming baby, and true or not that made for a bit of a cringe-fest. I don't think I'd call the film bad for that fact, just kind of grating in a stressful thriller aspect. The acting and tension were solid for what the film is, but I thought the characters left a lot to be desired with how they were written in this one. The situation was also kind of dumb, as was the ending. Maybe if they had added sharks to the movie it could have been better..

2006 Ranked 2000’s Ranked Horror Ranked Horror in the 2000’s Ranked Open Sea Ranked

joshrowley

Review by joshrowley ★★ 3

eva

Review by eva ★

what the hell was the ending lmao

Naughty aka Juli Norwood

Review by Naughty aka Juli Norwood ★★★

It claims it's based on a true story but so far my research has produced nothing to back that claim up! So I'm not going to tag it as a true story!

I don't feel this story stirs up the primal fear that the original does so well! The stupidity in the original was plausible and the source of stupidity wasn't the couple we were rooting for to survive! The tour guide was guilty of stupidity which made us feel closer to the couple because we could feel their pain (anger)!

whereas this film asked us to swallow a boat load of water and then had the nerve to ask us if we wanted more! On top of that we…

mikey v

Review by mikey v ★★★

these type of movies r all i want to watch now they all suck so much i love it

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Product Description

When a group of friends fail to lower the ladder of their boat, they find themselves stranded in the surrounding waters and struggle to survive.

Product details

  • Aspect Ratio ‏ : ‎ 2.35:1
  • Is Discontinued By Manufacturer ‏ : ‎ No
  • MPAA rating ‏ : ‎ R (Restricted)
  • Product Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 0.7 x 7.5 x 5.4 inches; 2.72 ounces
  • Item model number ‏ : ‎ LGT20919DVD
  • Director ‏ : ‎ Hans Horn
  • Media Format ‏ : ‎ Multiple Formats, Widescreen, Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC, Subtitled, Dolby
  • Run time ‏ : ‎ 1 hour and 34 minutes
  • Release date ‏ : ‎ February 20, 2007
  • Actors ‏ : ‎ Susan May Pratt, Richard Speight Jr., Niklaus Lange, Ali Hillis, Cameron Richardson
  • Subtitles: ‏ : ‎ English, Spanish
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English (Dolby Digital 5.1), English (Dolby Digital 2.0)
  • Studio ‏ : ‎ Lionsgate
  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B000LC3IE2
  • Writers ‏ : ‎ Adam Kreutner, Collin McMahon, David Mitchell, Richard Speight Jr.
  • Country of Origin ‏ : ‎ USA
  • Number of discs ‏ : ‎ 1
  • #612 in Horror (Movies & TV)
  • #889 in Mystery & Thrillers (Movies & TV)
  • #3,316 in Drama DVDs

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In September, 1983, Tami Oldham Ashcraft and her fiance, Richard Sharp , were hired to take a 44-foot yacht on a 4,000-mile journey from Tahiti to San Diego. About halfway through their cross-Pacific journey, they ran into Hurricane Raymond, a tropical storm which had been building in power for a couple of weeks. They struggled to control the yacht in 145-knot winds, and Sharp was washed overboard, lost in the mountainous seas. Ashcraft had a head injury, and the yacht was badly damaged, but she managed to jerry-rig a sail and then navigated her way—manually, using a sextant and a watchover 1,500 miles to Hawaii. It took her an astonishing 41 days. She survived on peanut butter. In 2002, Ashcraft wrote a book about her experience, Red Sky in Mourning: A True Story of Love, Loss and Survival at Sea . "Adrift," the film adaptation directed by Baltasar Kormákur , wears its heart on its sleeve. It's not just a story of an incredible feat of survival. It's also a love story, presented with the subtlety of a sledgehammer. 

When Richard ( Sam Claflin ) and Tami ( Shailene Woodley ) meet in Tahiti, she's working in a marina, a girl already somewhat "adrift" but not really worried about it yet, and he is a yacht-owner who wants to sail around the world. Their love story involves jumping off cliffs, random laughter, and a conversation about flowers. There's not much substance to it, and the script (by Aaron Kandell , Jordan Kandell , David Branson Smith —apparently, there wasn't one female writer in a 4,000-mile radius who contributed to this story of a woman alone at sea) is low on subtext. The two speak their feelings bluntly ("I sailed half the world to find you"), with music swelling up on cue. All of this is pretty standard stuff, and forgivable, really. Nobody's looking for intricate relationship subtlety in a movie like this. What we're waiting for is the storm. 

The film starts with Tami lying injured in the interior of the yacht after the storm. The cabin is filled with water and debris. She staggers onto the deck, only to find Richard's safety line dangling overboard. She thinks she sees Richard floating on a dinghy in the distance. Filled with determination to get to him, she mends the yacht as well as she can, pumping water out of the cabin, fixing the sail. She eventually makes it to the dinghy, and—with a superhuman effort, drags the injured Richard through the water back to the boat, and somehow (Kormákur doesn't show us how) pulls him up the ladder onto the deck. His ribs are collapsed, his leg is badly wounded. Because this is a true story, we know Richard was swept off the boat, never to be seen again. So it's not clear at first if they have decided to fictionalize the story, or if she is having some kind of sustained hallucination. 

"Adrift" flips back and forth between their burgeoning romance on Tahiti and the increasingly dire situation after the storm, as Tami struggles to keep herself and Richard alive. It is she who makes the decision to turn north and try to reach Hawaii, as opposed to continuing on to San Diego. It is she who rations out the food. When problems arise, she has to figure out solutions. She hovers over maps, peers through the sextant, makes calculations, all while battling dehydration (and possibly a lingering concussion from her head injury). "Adrift" shares many similarities with " All Is Lost ," the 2013 film starring Robert Redford , with some crucial differences. Redford is the only person in "All Is Lost." There is no dialogue. He doesn't talk to himself, to let us in on his thought process. There is no " Wilson " like in " Cast Away ," a device allowing the stranded character to verbalize his feelings. "All Is Lost" takes place in a vast and eerie silence. We don't know anything about the character, we don't know why he's out there alone, we don't know his onshore life. All we do is see him try—step by gritty step—to survive another day. "Adrift" avoids many of the challenges "All Is Lost" faces head on. 

Kormákur is drawn to stories about feats of survival (" Everest ," "The Deep"), and the sea and its storms feature strongly in his work (much of which takes place in his home country, Iceland). He's on familiar turf. Cinematographer Robert Richardson , a frequent collaborator of Quentin Tarantino , Martin Scorsese and Oliver Stone , does tremendous work with "Adrift." The frequent aerial shots of the tiny yacht surrounded by immense ocean are chilling: the frame looks almost existentially empty. There's one dizzying scene in Tahiti where first Tami and then Richard leap off a cliff into a deep pool below, and it seems like Richardson must be perched out in mid-air beside the cliff (and when Richard jumps, the camera follows him all the way down). The sunsets ooze fiery colors, with the yacht in black silhouette in the foreground. 

This must have been an extremely rigorous shoot for all involved, and Kormákur has maintained remarkable control over the images. Shots match, even as they're filming out in open ocean: the weather, the sky, the height and dip of the waves in any given sequence, all maintain consistency. The storm, when it finally comes, is an extraordinary piece of filmmaking and effects. In an interview when her book came out, Tami Ashcraft was asked about whether or not the storm depicted in the film adaptation of " The Perfect Storm " was an accurate depiction of what such a storm is like. She replied, "There wasn't enough spray and the wall of water was a little hokey." There's nothing hokey about the storm in "Adrift" ( Dadi Einarsson  supervised the visual effects). As the yacht surfs up the side of a mountain of water, the entire background of the screen is filled with heaving ocean. There's no sky in sight, just flailing waves the size of three-story buildings. And they clearly listened to Ashcraft, because the air is filled with spray, splashing against the camera. It's chaos. The entire scene is a screaming nightmare come to life. 

There's minimal chemistry between the two actors, who aren't given much to go on in terms of who these characters are. It's hard to "buy into" the Great Love they're "selling" here. But there's a fascination in stories like these, stories like " Touching the Void " or "And I Alone Survived." What human beings will do to survive, facing a Mother Nature who seems to have a vested interest in killing them, is, yes, awe-inspiring. It makes you think, "How would I face such challenges? Would I be as resourceful as Tami? Or would I give up?"

Sheila O'Malley

Sheila O'Malley

Sheila O'Malley received a BFA in Theatre from the University of Rhode Island and a Master's in Acting from the Actors Studio MFA Program. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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Adrift (2018)

120 minutes

Shailene Woodley as Tami Oldham

Sam Claflin as Richard Sharp

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24 Movies Trapped At Sea

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Water, water everywhere, and not a damn way to get home. That’s this week’s gallery theme: Movies where we see people trapped on the open seas, inspired by  Adrift , starring Shailene Woodley and Sam Claflin as two young lovers whose boat is incapacitated after sailing directly into a catastrophic hurricane (and with Claflin’s character suffering from a life-threatening injury). Likewise, the movies in this gallery see heroes under immense pier pressure when their boats get hijacked, destroyed, or worse of all, disappeared all together.

Note: Because a lot of movies fall under this theme, we’re not including submarine movies ( Das Boot ,  Below ,  Black Sea ) or movies where the heroes can generally head home at any time ( Jaws ,  The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou ).

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Best Movies About Being Stranded at Sea

Films about being stranded at sea are some of the most exhilarating and terrifying out there. From Dead Calm to Life of Pi, here are the best.

Looking back, there are a surprisingly large number of movies that are about being stranded at sea. There is good reason for this: when looking to make a truly hard-hitting movie, what could be more terrifying than the feelings of hopelessness and fear associated with being stranded, miles from land with chances of survival getting slimmer by the minute? Add in an extra threat of, say a human-eating shark, or even escalating friction with the other unfortunate souls you may be stranded with, and you have a recipe for pure terror.

Updated September 22, 2022: If you love a good pulse-pounding, stranded at sea film, you'll be happy to know we've updated this articles with additional content and titles.

The fear factor is upped by the fact that a lot of these stories are not wild fantastical tales, but are scenarios that feel far closer to home and are situations that anyone of us could potentially find ourselves in. In fact, a large percentage of these types of movies are based on true stories . Admittedly, due to the popularity of these gripping films, which can often be shot on a low budget, the market has become slightly oversaturated in recent years, with countless sequels and rip-offs flooding the scene, so to speak. With this in mind, below are 10 of the best movies about being stranded at sea.

10 Dead Calm

If you’re only going to feature three superb actors in your movie, you could do a lot worse than the combined greatness of Sam Neil, Nicole Kidman, and Billy Zane. While out sailing in an attempt to try to take their minds off the loss of their son, a married couple come across a stranded stranger. They offer kindness and help, but as the story progresses, it becomes apparent that not everything is as it seems with the stranger. A genuinely tense thriller, Dead Calm is a fine example of creating an engaging and exciting movie without needing a huge budget.

Not only has this group of pals found themselves capsized and stranded out at sea, they’re also being stalked by a great white shark. Unlike numerous shark-based movies before (and after) it, The Reef used real footage of sharks in the movie , according to Screen Rant , instead of practical or CGI effects, which always run the danger of making the sharks look unrealistic and, at times, downright ridiculous. Definitely one of the more genuinely scary shark flicks, The Reef never eases up on the tension, keeping viewers glued to the edge of their seats for the entire 90-minute run time. Maybe it's not the most original movie on the list, but certainly one of the most exciting.

Related: Exclusive: Andrew Traucki and Teressa Liane of The Reef: Stalked on Their Allegorical Shark Movie

Titanic is proof that ‘bigger’ is not always better. The RMS Titanic was carrying 3,320 people when it was destroyed by a giant iceberg, the majority of who did not survive the aftermath. The real-life tragedy portrayed in James Cameron’s harrowing 1997 movie manages to perfectly capture the feelings of fear, panic and hopelessness as we spend time in those final moments with the passengers stranded at sea after the ship begins sinking.

Obviously, the sheer scale of death and destruction was certainly impactful, but it felt even more personal as we spend nearly 3 hours with the two lead characters, Rose and Jack, following their forbidden romance and rooting for them throughout. After allowing the audience to develop this tightly intimate bond with these two characters, we’re left devastated as, spoiler alert, it does not end well.

7 Open Water

Yet another movie on this list made all the more terrifying by the fact that it is based, albeit rather loosely, on a true story. This time, Open Water concentrates on an American couple who go scuba diving while on vacation, but find themselves stranded at sea and surrounded by sharks as their tour boat accidentally leaves them behind. Shot out at sea on an ultra-low budget, this actually adds an immense sense of realism and intensity, creating for a nerve racking 80 minutes in which the viewers hearts are in their mouths the entire time.

6 White Squall

A white squall is the occurrence of a sudden, violent windstorm at sea, one which hits without warning. The lack of the usual warning signs, like black clouds, makes them near impossible to avoid when out at sea, as evidenced by the skipper (played assuredly by Jeff Bridges, in one of his more overlooked performances) and his class of students on a school sailing trip in White Squall .

Needless to say, the result was catastrophic, ending in tragedy, and the skipper is put on trial. Based on the real-life sailing boat the Albatross, which sank in 1961, director Ridley Scott not only focuses on the trauma of the event itself, but also spends plenty of time developing the characters beforehand in a coming-of-age style plot which makes the tragedy even more hard hitting for the audience.

5 All Is Lost

Legendary silver screen icon Robert Redford headlines the Golden Globe-winning survival drama All Is Lost , in which the Hollywood great portrays a veteran mariner who finds his vessel adrift at sea following a debilitating collision with a storage container. The man must fight to survive a vicious incoming storm without the help of any navigation equipment or a radio to call out for help, and the riveting picture chronicles his relentless crusade to make it out alive and back to his loved ones. AlI Is Lost features almost no dialogue and only utilizes Redford's immense talent as the sole character of the film , bringing the lost mariner's desperation and fear to life in a spectacularly moving fashion.

Like Titanic , this is based on a real-life event , just on a much smaller scale. No less harrowing for the viewer, Adrift stars Shailene Woodley and Sam Claflin as a couple who are stranded in the middle of the Pacific Ocean after Hurricane Raymond in 1983, and must find their way to Hawaii with a damaged boat and no radio.

Like James Cameron did with Titanic , the film not only focuses on the disaster and survival aspects of the story , but also highlights the intimate bond and romance between the two leads, allowing the viewers to become fully invested in their well-being. Even from the safety of your own couch, the rollercoaster of emotions you’re taken through is mentally draining — one can only imagine what it would have been like to have been there, lost at sea.

3 The Shallows

Inspired by her husband Ryan Reynold’s minimalist movie Buried , which takes place entirely in a coffin, Blake Lively teamed up with director Jaume Collet-Serra and writer Anthony Jaswinski for this stranded at sea survival horror. This time around, the story follows a surfer (played by Lively) instead of a sailor, who gets stranded out at sea, only to find herself under threat from a great white shark.

Interestingly, the majority of The Shallows was shot in a tank using blue screens for effects, with the shark being entirely computer generated. Somehow, the result is still ultra-realistic, making you feel as if you are right there in the water with her, kind of the Blair Witch Project of stranded at sea shark movies.

2 The Poseidon Adventure

The very notion of being lost at sea is terrifying all in itself, but throw in the element of a capsized ship on the verge of being completely consumed by water and the stakes get even more dicey. The '70s classic disaster film The Poseidon Adventure centers on the titular ocean liner as it is tragically overturned by a destructive tsunami, trapping its unsuspecting inhabitants and leaving them to figure out how to escape the stranded ship.

Related: These Movies Will Make You Second Guess Ever Getting on a Boat

The spine-tingling flick went on to earn 8 Academy Award nominations and won two, with critics lauding it for its pulse-pounding tension, outstanding visual effects and commanding performances. Since its release, The Poseidon Adventure has gone on to become a cult film and is a knockout example of the disaster genre.

1 Life of Pi

One of the most critically lauded movies of its year, Life of Pi was nominated for a total of 11 Oscars, winning four. The premise revolves around a 16-year-old Indian boy named Pi Patel (Suraj Sharma) who is stranded on a lifeboat with a dangerous Bengal tiger after surviving an ocean liner shipwreck. The movie is captivating from start to finish: we follow Pi’s tale as the pair learn to trust each other in this visually stunning masterclass in storytelling. Its incredible technology and deeply allegorical substance results in one of the most mesmerizing movies about begin stranded at sea.

Adrift (2017)

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25 sailing movies for when you’re knot shore what to watch

We share some of our favourite best sailing movies, from Hollywood blockbusters and indie films to illuminating documentaries

I still hang on to the rather fanciful notion of sailing in the Clipper Round the World Yacht Race . Until I pluck up the courage (and the funds), I’ve been busying myself with more realistic nautical escapades.

From  tall ship sailing off the west coast of Scotland  to  sailing the Whitsunday Islands  in Australia , more and more of our travels have taken place on the water.

However, until I make the leap from weekend warrior to blue water sailor, I’ll have to make do with films, books and daydreams.

With that in mind, I’ve put together a list of the best sailing movies I’ve seen. What follows is a broad mix of modern and classic, indie and feature, drama and documentary film. Whatever their style, these flicks are thoroughly wet and wonderful.

And, I’m sorry about the pun, but you know, ship happens.

best sailing movies

Listed in no particular order, these nautical movies include terrifying ordeals of tragedy, inconceivable stories of survival, turbulent tales of adventure and wild journeys of discovery – perfect for a night in on a dry and comfy sofa.

1. Kon-Tiki (1950) Let’s start with one of the best sailing movies ever made. In 1947, Heyerdahl and five others sailed from Peru on a balsa wood raft. This is the classic Academy Award winning documentary of their astonishing journey across 4,300 miles of the Pacific Ocean.

Kon Tiki is one of the best sailing movies

Watch on Amazon Rotten Tomatoes IMDB

2. Red Dot on the Ocean (2014) Once labelled a ‘youth-at-risk’, 30-year old Matt Rutherford risked it all in an attempt to become the first person to sail solo non-stop around North and South America. Red Dot on the Ocean is the story of Matt’s death-defying voyage and the childhood odyssey that shaped him.

Red Dot movie poster – one of the best sailing movies

3. The Dove (1974) Produced by Gregory Peck, this coming-of-age adventure is based on the true story of Robin Lee Graham . At 16, he set sail in a 23ft sloop determined to be the youngest person to sail around the world.

The Dove – one of the best sailing movies

4. Wind (1992) In over 140 years of competition, the US has lost the America’s Cup just once. This is a fictional story of the American challengers intent on winning back sailing’s top prize. A tale of money, power, love and ambition follows… oh, and some sailing.

Wind  movie poster

5. Morning Light (2008) A riveting true-life adventure aboard the high-tech sloop Morning Light. Fifteen rookie sailors have one goal in mind: to be part of her crew, racing in one of the most revered sailing competitions in the world, the Transpac Yacht Race .

Morning light movie poster

6. Between Home – Odyssey of an Unusual Sea Bandit (2012) An independent filmmaker’s account of his solo voyage from the UK to Australia, negotiating the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans en route. A trip that eventually takes over two years to complete.

Between Home movie poster

Watch on Amazon IMDB

7. Styx (2019) When a lone yachtswoman comes across a sinking ship of refugees, she is torn away from her idyllic trip and tasked with a momentous decision. Should she act when authorities tell her to sail away?

Styx movie poster – one of the best sailing movies

8. Captain Ron (1992) After inheriting a yacht, a Chicago businessman enlists long-haired, one-eyed low-life Captain Ron to pilot the yacht from the Caribbean to Miami. During the voyage, the sailor frequently loses his way while becoming a hit with the businessman’s family. Goofy comedy starring Kurt Russell and Martin Short widely recognised as one of the funniest sailing movies ever made.

Cpt Ron movie poster

9. Maidentrip (2013) This riveting documentary chronicles the life and adventures of 14-year-old Laura Dekker who set out on a two-year voyage in pursuit of her dream to be the youngest person ever to sail solo around the world.

Maidentrip movie – one of the best sailing movies

10. Kon-Tiki (2012) A well-crafted retelling of the epic original and one of the best sailing movies ever made. This dramatised version is a throwback to old-school adventure filmmaking that’s exciting and entertaining in spite of its by-the-book plotting.

Kon Tiki 2012 movie – one of the best sailing movies

“But you can’t navigate a raft,” he added. “It goes sideways and backwards and round as the wind takes it.” – Thor Heyerdahl, Kon-Tiki

11. Abandoned (2015) Four men set sail on the trimaran yacht Rose Noelle . It capsizes in a storm, trapping the crew in a space the size of a double bed. After 119 days adrift, the yacht washes ashore. The crew’s story is extraordinary, but doubt is cast on their claims and they face hostility from the media and authorities.

Abandoned is one of the best sailing movies

12. Adrift (2019) There are far better films on this list, but Adrift is just about worth a watch. Based on true events, a young couple embark on an adventure of a lifetime that brings them face to face with one of the worst hurricanes in recorded history.

Adrift best sailing movies

13. The Perfect Storm (2000) A skipper insists that his crew go out on a final fishing trip before winter sets in. Unknown to them, a brutal storm is on its way. While the special effects are excellent for the time, the film falls a little  short on characterisation.

The Perfect Storm movie – one of the best sailing movies

14. Sea Gypsies: The Far Side of the World (2016) The vessel is Infinity, a 120ft hand-built sailboat, crewed by a band of miscreants. The journey, an 8,000-mile Pacific crossing from New Zealand to Patagonia with a stop in Antarctica .

Sea gypsies movie poster

15. Turning Tide / En Solitaire (2013) Franck Drevil is a star skipper, having won the latest Vendée Globe , the most prestigious round-the-world single-handed yacht race. However, with this year’s race approaching, a sudden accident forces Franck to withdraw.

Turning Time movie poster

16. Knife in the Water (1962) When a young hitchhiker joins a couple on a weekend yacht trip, psychological warfare breaks out as the two men compete for the woman’s attention. A storm forces the small crew below deck and tension builds to a violent climax.

best sailing movies knife in the water poster

17. Dead Calm (1989) This tense thriller tells the story of an Australian couple (Nicole Kidman and Sam Neill) whose yacht cruise is violently interrupted by the mysterious lone survivor (Billy Zane) of a ship whose crew has perished.

Dead Calm movie poster – one of the best sailing movies

18. The Riddle of the Sands (1979) A classic British swashbuckling yarn based on the early English spy novel of the same name. In 1901, two British yachtsmen visit Germany’s Frisian Islands and accidentally discover a German plot to invade England.

best sailing movies movie poster

19. Maiden (2019) The story of Tracy Edwards, a 24-year-old cook on charter boats, who became the skipper of the first-ever all-female crew to enter the Whitbread Round the World Race in 1989.

Maiden movie poster

20. White Squall (1996) Based on a true incident from 1960, White Squall is the story of the tragic sinking of the Albatross , a prep school educational two-masted schooner, during a Caribbean storm. Starring Jeff Bridges.

White Squall movie poster

21. The Mercy (2017) Starring Colin Firth and Rachel Weisz, this is certainly no heroic tale. Instead, it’s the dramatisation of the bizarre story of amateur sailor Donald Crowhurst and his attempt to pull off one of the greatest hoaxes of our time: pretending to be the first to sail singlehandedly around the world!

The Mercy movie poster

22. Deep Water (2006) Following on from the above, Deep Water is a British documentary about the remarkable story of the first Golden Globe round the world yacht race , focusing on the psychological toll it took on its competitors – particularly one Donald Crowhurst.

deep water movie poster

23. Captains Courageous (1937) A spoiled brat who falls overboard from a steamship gets picked up by a fishing boat, where he’s made to earn his keep by joining the crew in their work. Based on the 1897 novel by Rudyard Kipling.

Captains Courageous movie poster

24. Open Water 2: Adrift (2006) A silly premise, but entertaining nonetheless. Six friends jump off a yacht without lowering the ladder first. With no way to climb aboard, it’s only a matter of time before bickering turns to terror.

Adrift is one of the best sailing movies

25. Master and Commander – The Far Side of the World (2003) During the Napoleonic Wars, a brash British captain (Russell Crowe) pushes his ship and crew to their limits in pursuit of a formidable French war vessel.

best sailing movies

“Do you not know that in the service one must always choose the lesser of two weevils?” – Capt. Jack Aubrey, Master and Commander

Readers’ suggestions

Here’s what our readers have added to the list of the best sailing movies.

  • Masquerade (1988)
  • Violets are Blue (1986)
  • Kill Cruise (1992)
  • Message in a Bottle (1999)
  • High wind in Jamaica (1965)
  • Caddyshack (1980)
  • O Mundo em Duas Voltas (The World in Two Round Trips) (2007)
  • One Crazy Summer (1986)
  • Coyote: The Mike Plant Story (2018)
  • The Weekend Sailor (2017)
  • Harpoon (2019)
  • Waterworld (1995)
  • Around Cape Horn (1929)
  • Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)
  • Mutiny on the Bounty (1962)
  • The Bounty (1984)
  • All Is Lost (2013)

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10 Best Boat Movies of All Time

best boat movies

Top 10 Best Boat Movies to Binge-Watch

  • Captain Ron (1992)
  • Maiden (2019)
  • Adrift (2018)
  • The Mercy (2017)
  • White Squall (1996)
  • Wind (1992)
  • Dead Calm (1989)
  • Jaws (1975)
  • Captain Phillips (2013)
  • Lifeboat (1944)

Find a Boat for Your Next Adventure

Captain Ron

Mandatory watching for any sailor, Captain Ron with Kurt Russell is remarkably accurate from a technical standpoint except for one glaring piece of silliness as it relates to sailboats. See if you can spot it. Any sailor worth his/her salt has most of the key lines memorized and despite its goofiness, there are a few scenes in this film that will ring remarkably true for anyone who’s spent time on an old boat.

A fascinating 2019 documentary about Tracy Edwards and her all-woman crew in the 1989 Whitbread Round the World Race. You can’t beat this true story for sheer grit and an important history lesson. There’s a bit of humor as well if just in the great fashions and bad mustaches of the times.

Loosely based on a true story from 1983, Adrift is the tale of a young couple on a yacht delivery. They become dismasted when they sail into the path of a hurricane and the rest is the story of the sheer will to survive. Shailene Woodley does an impressive acting job in this tale with a twist. Watch this one alone if you ever want your significant other to go distance cruising.

A fictionalized tale of the very real and very disturbed Donald Crowhurst, this 2017 film centers on the 1968 Golden Globe Race, the first singlehanded, non-stop circumnavigating competition. Colin Firth captures the misery of impending failure and the film puts the rigors of sailing in context as Crowhurst faces the open ocean and an uncertain future alone.

White Squall

Not exactly a chuckle fest, White Squall is based on a real tragedy from the 1960s. Jeff Bridges as the stalwart captain in charge of a training vessel and a bunch of wealthy newbie sailors relies on discipline to keep an orderly ship. When disaster strikes, it’s an uncomfortable study of what it means to be a captain.

A mixed cast of real America’s Cup racers and thespians like Mathew Modine and Jennifer Grey act their hearts out in this tale of competitive drama. The plot is thin, the dialogue is stilted and the acting is at times cringe-worthy, but the cinematography is phenomenal. You can’t beat this movie for sheer beauty.

More in the horror genre is Dead Calm with Nicole Kidman and Sam Neill cruising a remote stretch of the South Pacific when they come across the evil Billy Zane. This one’s full of completely improbably scenarios, sailing inaccuracies and a young Kidman’s bizarre perm, but it’s a bit of twisted fun that will put the Academy Awards in perspective.

Spielberg’s major directorial debut couldn’t be more iconic and quotes from Jaws can be entertaining at any happy hour. If you get a chance, watch the two-hour making of this film as well to appreciate the end product. Not everyone sees this movie as a comedy but if you watch closely, you’ll see a bit of humor.

Captain Phillips

In 2009, the US-flagged container ship Maersk Alabama was taken over by Somali pirates. Tom Hanks convincingly plays the captain during this hostage drama that was made into an award-winning feature film in 2013. This is a portrayal of leadership during its most taught moments.

Finally, a classic thriller from Alfred Hitchcock based on a John Steinbeck novel. After a German U-boat sinks a passenger ship, the survivors crowd into a lifeboat along with a German officer they pull from the water. You’ll not find a more convincing study of group dynamics and human nature than this well-crafted 1944 award winner.

There are probably 50 other nautical films that are well worth watching, so start with these and you may soon become a seafaring movie buff.

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movie yacht no ladder

An Arsenal of Mysteries: The Terrifying Allure of a Remote Caribbean Island

Why had immigrants, seekers and pilgrims been drawn for centuries to the treacherous shores of Mona Island? I set off to find out.

In Cueva Lirio. Even after many decades, the island’s sculptural inner terrain can be difficult to navigate. Credit... Christopher Gregory-Rivera for The New York Times

Supported by

By Carina del Valle Schorske

Carina del Valle Schorske is a contributing writer for the magazine. She spent four days on Mona Island, where, among other things, she climbed a ladder made of driftwood to report from a cave.

  • Published March 20, 2024 Updated March 21, 2024, 5:32 a.m. ET

Every year, I spend a month or two in Puerto Rico, where my mother’s family is from. Often I go in winter, with the other snowbirds, finding solace among palm trees. But I’m not a tourist, not really. I track the developers that privatize the shoreline; I follow the environmental reports that give our beaches a failing grade. I’m disenchanted with the Island of Enchantment, suspicious of an image that obscures the unglamorous conditions of daily life: frequent blackouts, meager public services, a rental market ravaged by Airbnb. Maybe that’s why I turned away from the sunshine and started to explore caves with my friends Ramón and Javier, seeking out wonders not yet packaged for the visitor economy. I’ve been learning to love stalactites and squeaking bats, black snakes and cloistered waterfalls — even, slowly, the darkness itself.

Listen to this article, read by Almarie Guerra de Wilson

Open this article in the New York Times Audio app on iOS.

The Greater Antilles and the Yucatán Peninsula form one of the most cavernous regions in the world, and many of these grottos contain precolonial inscriptions. But no other site can match the density of designs found on Mona, a semiarid mesa halfway between Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. The island is ringed by sheer cliffs and honeycombed with miles of subterranean passageways. Most of the inscriptions are tucked away in the so-called dark zone, far from access to the upper world, congregating around rare pools of freshwater. More accessible chambers harbor other histories: an Incan vase filled with gold coins, shards of a Spanish olive jar stained with the oldest wine in the Americas. In one cave, a foreign visitor from the 16th century carved a kind of commentary alongside ancient petroglyphs: “ plura fecit deus .” “God made many things.” I kept repeating the phrase to myself like a mantra, trying to impose divine order on the contradictions of the New World, the only world I’ve ever known.

movie yacht no ladder

Mona now “belongs” to Puerto Rico (and thus to the United States), but the island has always retained a certain rugged self-possession, rising fatherless and fully formed from the sea like an American Aphrodite. The archaeologist Ovidio Dávila famously described the island as “a floating fortress”: remote, inhospitable, an arsenal of mysteries. But Mona also teems with life: flowering cactuses, swirling flocks of seabirds, orchids and iguanas and frogs found nowhere else on Earth. Hawksbill turtles from as far away as Panama crawl onshore to nest under the summer moon. Enormous basket sponges and gorgonian corals cling to the sea wall. Many migrant species rarely seen from Puerto Rico proper come close to shore: dolphins, pilot whales, tiger sharks, bluefin tuna, flying fish. Mona’s remote beaches receive tribute from faraway waters, as if this might be the secret center of the world.

But for many Puerto Ricans, Mona is a legendary backwater, the punchline for a whole genre of jokes: Your political enemies “couldn’t even win the mayor’s race on Mona,” the socialists should “go live with the iguanas,” the Supreme Court might consider setting up “its little theocracy” over there. Like Robinson Crusoe, even locals who should know better view this other island as a blank slate for exile or utopia. Of course, Mona wasn’t always an abstraction. Before Europeans wandered west, Indigenous people settled the island as early as 3000 B.C. When Columbus first came to Mona in 1494, there was a community cultivating a marvelous variety of fruits and tubers from a thin fringe of arable soil on the island’s western side. Indigenous people continued to survive on Mona for another hundred years — much longer than elsewhere in the region — taking refuge in the island’s mysterious interior. Since then, the island has hosted a vivid procession of conquistadors, conversos, maroons, priests, pirates, prisoners, guano miners, military men, treasure hunters, scientists and refugees.

‘God made many things’ — so many more than the Old World predicted!

Now Mona is a protected nature reserve, and the only residents are park rangers. Researchers and amateurs alike must apply for a permit from Puerto Rico’s Department of Natural and Environmental Resources in order to travel there. Hunters come to subdue the feral descendants of goats and pigs introduced by the Spanish. Scuba divers wander the reefs.

But the Mona Passage — fast-flowing, shark-infested, one of the roughest stretches of water in the world — remains a troubled crucible of imperial traffic. Every year, migrants from Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic crowd small boats and try to make the dangerous crossing to Puerto Rico, the local gateway to the American dream. Many drown, uncountable bodies at the bottom of the sea. Hundreds wind up stranded on Mona, abandoned by smugglers looking to cut corners on the journey, then deported by authorities within days. Even those who visit Mona for recreation sometimes stumble into the island’s traps. In 2001, a Boy Scout got lost and died of dehydration. Just last month, a hunter disappeared near a well-known cave not far from camp.

Why did these frightening stories seduce me? If so many people were willing to suffer the island’s torments, I figured they must be suffering for something: freedom, beauty, maybe even wisdom. The travel industry sells the Caribbean as a gentle paradise where the workers of the first world can escape to rest at last on the shores of an infinite resort. But Mona remains incompletely mastered, a wilderness where you won’t be welcomed, where it’s still possible to lose your way and lose your life.

“This curious world,” Thoreau wrote, “is more wonderful than convenient,” and his words came to me as I gathered my hiking boots and helmet, laxatives and Dramamine, batteries, baby wipes and safety wardrobe of neon orange. After nearly a year of bureaucratic tribulations, I was finally going to Mona. The two most popular tour companies never wrote me back, so I planned the trip with Jaime Zamora, a freelance guide who had been exploring the island for more than 40 years. But it was better this way. I liked the purity of his passion and his disdain for institutions. Instead of a website or brochure, he directed me to a private Facebook group where he maintained a meticulous archive of old maps, news clippings and personal photographs of artifacts he found on the island: a creamy conch shell with a hole drilled through it, the ornamental handles of a broken urn.

In December, the stars suddenly aligned: Our permits were approved, the seas calmed and we pulled a team together. I crossed Midtown with cash in my coat to wire to a boat captain named Mikey. My friends Ramón and Javier came through; so did my friend Elisa. Our photographer, Chris, would bring his partner, Andrea. Jaime recruited some old comrades: Chito, Manuel and Charlito, the cook. The ecologist Hector Quintero, known as Quique, signed on and suggested we might invite Tony Nieves, who had recently retired from 33 years as Mona Island’s director. Finally, Jaime texted to say the moon would be full for our visit: “In one week,” he promised, “your magic will begin to shine.”

The boats arrived at the pier in Joyuda, on the western shore of Puerto Rico, near dawn. We were relieved to discover that the sea was quiet: “ plancha ’ o ,” the captain said, like an ironed sheet, only this gracious once or twice a year. He warned me not to get the wrong impression: “ Mona no es así .” Still, I could feel it when we crossed into the Mona Passage proper, where the waters of the Atlantic and the Caribbean come together in a cauldron of treacherous crosscurrents. The prow began to jump across the waves, so that we had to brace hard against the railing to keep our tailbones from bruising. I realized I had never been this close to the water for this long — I always approached Puerto Rico from above — and I tried to imagine the first people who came this way, rowing with no land in sight, searching the sky for congregations of clouds, the sign of green things breathing.

Over the last several years, I’d been unlearning the standard narrative about precolonial history. In Puerto Rico, the Department of Education still promotes the tired narrative that the people who greeted Columbus were simple and docile, with a rudimentary culture. But Reniel Rodríguez, an archaeologist, told me that the recent research is very clear: The migrants who left Central America and the Amazon basin to populate our archipelago were great mariners, like the Polynesians, navigating by stars and currents and wind patterns. Over generations of migration, they formed multiethnic polities and maintained vast trade networks: jade from Guatemala, gold and copper alloys from Colombia, jaguar’s teeth from continental jungles. None of these materials arrived by accident. As we bumped along, I wondered what it was like to bring, say, a passel of guinea pigs from Colombia to Puerto Rico in the bottom of a wide canoe.

The oldest carbon-dated evidence of human habitation on Mona dates from about 2800 B.C. They were probably attracted to the island’s majestic underworld. Indigenous mythology names symbolic caves as the great cosmic incubators, giving birth to the moon, the sun and the archipelago’s first people. Mona’s residents filled the caves with signs. The island was never a land of milk and honey, so its importance must have been strategic and spiritual rather than strictly productive: Ovidio Dávila imagines “a meeting point and tribal crossroads,” hosting chiefs and traders, “parliaments and pilgrimages.” The rigor of the journey to Mona conferred a kind of gravity on every human drama that unfolded on the mesa’s barren stage.

It took a long while for Puerto Rico to fall out of view, and hours more for Mona to appear, so that I felt suspended in time as well as space. I could imagine the Spanish ships prowling the Caribbean, snatching people from the Lesser Antilles and the coast of South America to “replenish” their depleted work force. I could imagine the first coffle of stolen Africans that would arrive in Santo Domingo. This passage still teems with human traffic. No one who worked these waters — our captain, the Coast Guard, local fishermen — wanted to talk to me about what they’d seen. Édouard Glissant was right: Even the brightest voyages bring to mind the depths of the sea, “with their punctuation of scarcely corroded balls and chains.”

I had taken off my glasses, foggy from the spray, so at first I wasn’t sure if the smudge of cream in the corner of my eye was just a trick of light. But then Quique pointed in the same direction, and the distant citadel began to shine — first the pale naked flanks of the highest cliffs, and then, slowly, the regions shadowed with underbrush. The island’s shape sharpened: a thin slice of stone floating like a cataract on the dark iris of the sea.

When we finally moored at Playa Pájaros, I woke up from my precolonial daydream. The beach was covered in trash. Quique blamed austerity: The Department of Natural and Environmental Resources, like all government agencies, has been defunded to prioritize the debt. There wasn’t money, anymore, to service the island properly. The rangers live on the other side, at Playa Sardinera, so our camp — Playa Pájaros — was wilder, both more private and more neglected. I was ashamed of my disappointment, realizing that it revealed some measure of willful naïveté: I knew the currents of the Mona Passage carried seeds and shells from far-off places, so why not shoes, plastic bottles, rubber tubing?

Still, there were hermit crabs and lizards creeping among the sea grapes, as there had been for millions of years, and wild cotton along the edges of the cliffs. Ramón helped me hang my nylon hammock from two sturdy trees, and I thought of the cotton slings — hamaca , an Arawak word — woven by the people of Mona, so finely made that the Spanish set them to work as suppliers for the imperial machine. I had never slept in a hammock before, but after the roughness of the voyage, it felt natural to sway, gently, and I dropped into a deep slumber for an hour, until I could hear Jaime pacing and singing, summoning us to our first cave.

If there had ever been a trail to Cueva Caballo, there wasn’t anymore, and so we had to shake the sleep from our senses in order to climb, almost crawl, through thorned bushes and over jagged limestone up toward the mouth of the cave. I was surprised to find a paved road just inside, punctuated by the rusted remnants of carts and rails. Tony explained how Cueva Caballo was mined for guano in the 19th century, when Western powers realized the nitrates in bat feces made it very good for gunpowder and fertilizer. The workers slept right here, among piles of excrement dredged up from the darkness. Eventually, they went on strike for lack of water. There was still fresh guano in Cueva Caballo — the color and texture of finely ground coffee — and the smell of ammonia saturated the tighter chambers, so that we passed through them quickly and sought out crevices in the stone where we could catch currents of fresh air.

“ Hay un chorro de formaciones ,” Jaime said, and it was true: The walls of the cave seemed to undulate like water, and a glittering white powder frosted the figures, crystallizing in chandeliers and sliding over smooth hills of stone like a gown over the hips of a beauty queen. “ Sorbeto ,” Tony told me it was called, as Jaime moved through the cave seeking his favorite free-standing sculptures and addressing them by his own private names: “ Huevo Frito ,” “ Dragón .” He was looking for “pearls,” the perfect mineral spheres that form over centuries in pools beneath dripping stalactites, especially one particular pearl he called “ La Cabeza, la perla más hermosa de toda la isla .” Tony, subtly competing, told me he had walked through every chamber in these caves — “ to’ completo ” — and was the only one who never lost his way on Mona.

Still, even after many decades, I could see how Jaime and Tony hesitated between branching passageways, retreating into memory’s inner topography before disappearing behind a blind curve. So many of the conversations I caught on tape were merely directional: “ Vamos pa’llá, ” “ No, más adelante, ” “ Y dónde está Javier? ” Cross-talk, muffled laughter. Jaime told me they sometimes stumbled upon the skeletons of goats that died lost in the labyrinth. We learned to listen for one another’s voices.

‘Yo la adoraba,’ he explained helplessly.

In Cueva Caballo, Jaime cried out: “ Se la robaron, Tony! ” When we found him, he was kneeling in front of what looked like an empty altar. La Cabeza — a glittering stone in the shape of a skull on a slender neck — had been carefully decapitated. There was a market for that kind of thing: Manuel said he had seen small-time hustlers selling stalactites on the roadside in the Dominican Republic. Even in the dim light of our headlamps, I could see Jaime’s face turn red, and I was worried he might cry. “ Yo la adoraba ,” he explained helplessly, using the word that blurs the boundary between love and worship. “If I were an Indian, this would be sacred for me.”

The older men in our group often spoke as if they had taken the place of Indigenous people. Jaime wore a necklace strung with three finely polished beads of shell and stone that he took from a cave years ago. Chito analyzed our dynamics as a “clan.” And Quique summoned scientific theories: Had I heard of epigenetics? How Native Americans transmitted the traumas of starvation, displacement and genocide across generations? Puerto Ricans, he continued, must be carrying our own ghosts. I was wary of these analogies, but I could also understand their emotional logic. Our guides had lived through “ el carpeteo ,” the U.S. government’s campaign against the Puerto Rican independence movement, when activists were surveilled and imprisoned, when close comrades turned out to be snitches. They were nostalgic for whatever came before the colonial encounter, when the islands they loved were sovereign. When we got back from Mona, Quique gave me a thumb drive of scientific documents and a short essay he wrote himself, simply titled, “Colonies Are There to Be Exploited.”

I struggled to absorb the intensity of information directed at me. Elisa, often at my side, said it was like standing next to a fire hose. Buried treasure, political intrigue, grand theories, deaths and disappearances. I was missing so much, but at least I could record the poetic names and properties of local plants: tourist tree, for its red and peeling bark, the cactus called snowball for its crown of white fuzz and thorns, the plumeria called alhelí cimarrón . In the mornings when it bloomed you could close your eyes and almost find your way across the island by following its fugitive perfume. Tabaco marino , rolled and smoked, might get you a little high. Chicharrón , higo chumbo , coca falsa . Jaime and Tony often returned to the same refrain: “ Eso es de aquí na’ más .” Only on Mona. Some of these species were immediately striking: The Mona land iguanas were enormous, with the terrible dignity of dinosaurs, and we had to fight them off whenever we took sponge baths by the cistern. Others seemed modest, enchanted only by the spell of our attention.

On the long, hot walk to the ruined lighthouse, Jaime and Tony peeled off, and Chito told me they were tired and had gone to camp. But on our way back, hours later, we came upon Jaime sitting in a patch of meager shade along the road. Our guides had finally found Psychilis monense, Mona Island’s endemic orchid, and Jaime was waiting to introduce us to this natural wonder. Last time he was on Mona, he spent an afternoon searching in vain, but this time — this time, just for us — she had revealed herself and would step into her stardom. Jaime had been so patient, had shown such fortitude, and now he was almost trembling with urgency as he guided us to the spot, off road, that he had marked with his staff so he wouldn’t lose the little flower.

The flower was indeed so little that I almost missed her, a bit of pale silk no larger than my thumbnail on the end of a long bare stem. When I bent the stem toward me to specify her beauty — a purple striped calyx, a clutch of green buds — I was worried it might snap. The tiniest dancer. How strange, I thought, to be so rare and lonely — endemic, endangered, the only flower in the stony field — and at the same time so unremarkable. Or was my own perceptive power unremarkable? My own capacity for feeling? Sometimes, reading research papers on Mona, I was baffled by the effort people made to catalog the most minute phenomena: the scientists in scuba gear who explored a dangerous underwater chamber in order to photograph “the curious case” of a cave-dwelling shrimp called Popeye. But I knew that the argument for protecting Mona depended on the meticulous accumulation of empirical evidence for the island’s singularity. And that love is not love without detail, without risk, without a touch of madness.

I tried to bring the intensity of attention I’d seen among our guides to the library. So much of my formal and informal education had rushed through the conquest of the Caribbean — especially Puerto Rico — as if the Spanish and then American invasions had been so successful that they erased not only the history of those who came before but also the muddy footprints of their own trajectory. Many primary sources confirmed the familiar narrative of unrelenting violence. The archaeologist Alice Samson drew my attention to an inventory of merchandise from Mona: “ grillones con un indio preso ” — shackles with a prisoner attached. But reading the colonial chronicles, I also felt a strange suspense, as if these encounters might have gone another way, as if the future I am living now had not yet been foretold.

Mona’s particular history dramatized the chaos and contingency of those early decades. The island’s location on the route between Santo Domingo and Spain made it a crucial supply station and entrepôt for slave trading. Juan Ponce de León imported roughly 80 captives to ramp up production of pan casabe , the durable flatbread made from yuca that was a staple of the Indigenous diet. Soon, Mona became the breadbasket for the whole colonial campaign: gold mines in Puerto Rico, armadas cruising for slaves, salt and pearls from Aruba to Venezuela. The women of Mona manufactured cotton ropes that might have been used — I can only speculate — to hoist sails, corral horses and bind the wrists of child brides.

But even at this high point of exploitation, Mona retained an ambivalent independence. Very few Spaniards took up permanent residence. Instead they installed Indigenous overseers and left the fragmented community to find its own working rhythm, to sustain traditions and experiment with new religions. Many of these people — colonizers, native islanders and captives from distant territories — would not have had a common language. Together, they had to learn to grapple with their new position at the center of apocalyptic change. They brokered deals with English and French raiders, they formed Creole families and they fled the violence of the island’s coast for caves in the interior, not far from the ceremonial ball courts.

Mona was never abandoned for long. Exiled islanders returned to fish, forage and visit sacred sites as their ancestors did for thousands of years. Sailors sick with scurvy came to gather oranges gone to seed. All through the 17th and 18th centuries, pirates frequented the island, making the surrounding waters some of the most perilous in the Atlantic world. The researcher Walter Cardona told me how Blackbeard, the notorious English buccaneer, used Mona to barrack twice-stolen Africans, reselling them on the black market once they became “acclimated” to hard labor. At the height of the Haitian Revolution, rebels moored ships along Mona’s coast. The island had become both a prison and a sanctuary, contested terrain where empire’s exiles hashed out new identities. In a recent article, Cardona included a photograph that Tony took of a skeleton recovered from Sardinera: DNA testing revealed a young man of African and Arawak ancestry, just a teenager when he died, maybe a maroon himself. Or maybe this was just wishful thinking, my desire for a story with a taste of freedom in it.

Something about the photograph — the arrangement of bones, the knowledge that Tony had touched them — made the limits of my reading obvious. I had come to Mona to go beyond the syllabus, and wasn’t it already working? Every feather and every grain of sand seemed like evidence. Every jagged window framing the sea looked like a wound torn open. Even the drooping casuarinas — imitation pines imported from Australia — seemed to lament their own story of displacement and adaptation. But there was one cave on Mona I still wanted to visit. Maybe seeing colonial signatures in stone would help me bridge the gap between the authority of documents and the testimony of the senses.

The entrance to Cave 18 was luminously pale and multicolored: blue, pink, yellow, the skyscape of a Renaissance painting. Right away, we had to bend at the waist, feeling our way through a wide, dim tunnel until it opened into a larger chamber. We were in the dark zone now, so that it wasn’t possible to go without our headlamps. Probably, the foreigners who visited this cave would have had to rely on local guides, the way I was now relying on Tony. I tried to let my senses adjust to the environment. This was my favorite kind of cave — not a cathedral but a chapel, damp and close as a pair of cupped hands. Later, reading Alice Samson’s analysis of Cave 18, I would learn that I had walked past the word “ entra ,” repeated three times in the same crude hand: a 16th-century visitor trying to formalize a route the first artists had established by feel, through the ceremony of repeated gestures.

The first signs I noticed myself were undulating lines traced into the soft, crumbly walls near eye level — “finger fluting,” Tony called it, an Indigenous technique common on Mona, where many caves are frosted with “ sudor de roca ,” as if stone, like human skin, could breathe and sweat. “Careful,” he warned me: It was easier to erase the delicate designs than it had been to create them.

I had just found an Indigenous petroglyph drawn high up on the curving ceiling — a round face with ornamental earrings — when Tony let out a small cry and beckoned me closer. This was the line I’d read about: plura fecit deus . The first word was written in perfect cursive, but the other words were messy, as if the writer had underestimated the effort it would require to inscribe his message. There’s no exact match for the Latin phrase in the religious writing of the period, so Samson suggests we take it at face value, as “a spontaneous response” to the cave itself. “God made many things” — so many more than the Old World predicted! Pineapples, manatees, reefs so thick with fish that boats could barely row to shore. Songs longer than books, clans ruled by women, caves that flickered with a thousand tiny faces peering out from the stone. Even familiar things, like Spanish melons, seemed transformed on Mona, swollen by the relentless sweetness of the sun. Was this not revelation? I tried to imagine landing here after months on a leaking caravel — outnumbered, now, by foreign people, encircled by charismatic foreign signs, compelled to register my wonderment with the sharpened point of a rusty nail.

Or maybe it was the other way around, and some of the crosses carved into the stone were made by mestizo conversos trying to reconcile competing cosmologies in the artistic language they knew best. Walter Cardona had combed the colonial literature for information on Mona’s Indigenous leaders, and he emerged with a document from 1517 listing every resident of the Sardinera village, many with hybrid names that reflected hybrid lives: Juan Yahagua, Francisco Maguatica, Isabel Bocoana, Luisica Guacoyo. Some of them might have kept visiting old sites of ceremony. Some of them might have shown strangers those hidden pathways and sacred chambers. Some of them might have disappeared together, preferring internal exile to the forced surrender of the island’s secrets.

When I met Walter Cardona in person, he told me he once spent nearly 10 hours in Cave 18, trying to catalog every human mark that was made there. Satisfied after his long effort, he announced, out loud, that he wasn’t planning to return. But the cave wouldn’t let him leave: “Something took me and threw me against the rock,” and he stayed there, pinned and paralyzed, for several moments before he realized he had spoken too soon. This was not a history you could finish. I remembered something I heard Tony say in a documentary: “No one can say they know Mona completely.” He was talking about space — the island’s intricate topography — but I was thinking about time.

Cave 18 is not a diorama, and Mona is not a museum. People still traverse these subterranean passageways in search of things they need: knowledge, freedom, temporary cover. Quique’s uncle was a rumrunner during Prohibition, or so the story goes, storing caches of liquor in caves. Now drug traffickers work the age-old route between South America and the Caribbean, stopping over on Mona to stash parcels of cocaine. And then, of course, there are the migrants: When Elisa and I arrived in Aguadilla, the airport guard told us how his father, a hunter, had stumbled upon a Dominican family in Cueva Negra, seeking shelter from the midday sun, trying to imagine an alternative to turning themselves in.

On the way back down from Cave 18, Tony walked us along Playa Mujeres, a dreamy stretch of white sand where sea turtles come to nest. We spotted the tracks of the animal’s soft, angled fins in the white sand. I took off my hiking boots to soothe my blisters in the surf. This beach seemed so much gentler than Playa Pájaros, I told Tony — and this, he replied, was why so many migrants landed here. Just a few weeks earlier, on Dec. 1, coyotes abandoned a group of 48 Haitians right where we were walking. Hundreds of migrants wind up on Mona every year — when the seas are calm, they come every week — and from all walks of life. There are doctors and ballplayers, mothers with babies and pets. Haiti and the Dominican Republic are both in crisis, Tony told me, and Puerto Rico seems to promise a more dignified style of poverty, perhaps a backdoor to U.S. citizenship.

The rangers at Sardinera gestured toward the graveyard of boats left behind on the island: “This is trash for us.” No one comes to clean up the evidence of Mona’s ongoing role in the underground economy. I walked closer to get a better look. Some had whimsical names like La Niña Coqueta that reminded me of slave ships called Friendship or Hope. The Middle Passage haunts these supposedly voluntary journeys. The rangers told me some coyotes throw menstruating women overboard so the sharks won’t track the smell of blood on the boat. When I see footage of migrants on Mona — lining up for food or singing a hymn in Kreyòl while they wait to be deported — I think of all the rebels, maroons and twice-sold people who made this island their temporary home.

The next day was our last on Mona, and we moved with a strange synchronicity, as if we had been rehearsing all along for a final performance. Like the other people thrown together there, we were beginning to fashion a shared culture of jokes and symbols, rhythms of rest and collective labor. Most of the footpaths through the coastal forest had been erased by recent hurricanes, so we had to open new corridors together, using our feet and knees to tamp down the underbrush and our hands to snap back dry branches. Jaime took me and Elisa to a heart-shaped chamber filled with impossibly velvety sand, talking us through what I can describe only as a matrimonial ritual. “Close your eyes,” he directed. “Can you hear that? The pulsing?” Now, he said, we belonged to Mona. We knew he practiced these lines on other people before, but we didn’t mind. Later, I told Elisa about a pictograph of a bird I’d seen in Cueva Lucero in Puerto Rico, and how Reniel, the archaeologist, identified an almost identical pictograph in other caves in the Dominican Republic. Jaime’s poetic repetitions were like that bird: a technology for creating community among people who might never meet.

That night, the moon was so completely red that it left a trail of blood across the sea. I wondered if the sky was always staging these operatic scenes behind scrims of light pollution. Not a scientific way to think, of course. The moon remained the moon regardless of our position or perception — mostly, if not completely, impervious to our corrupting touch.

But I still thought of all the natural wonders that had faded in the centuries since colonial contact. The chronicles suggest that all of Puerto Rico’s bays once glittered with bioluminescence. The afternoon sky would go dark when massive murmurations of green parrots from El Yunque blocked the sun. It was tempting to imagine they could skim the cream from the Milky Way and drink it. But I also knew that future generations would look back in wonder at what we have now, helpless with rage over what we’ve ruined.

Everyone went to sleep early. We knew that it was unlikely we would return to Mona together, and that even if we did, the island would be different: the infrastructure even more degraded, or worse, privatized. On our way back, there were flying fish, rainbows in the foam, bachata on the radio. Then the police stopped our boat — a reminder that government resources are always directed to limiting, rather than facilitating, the movement of people across the archipelago. I tried to keep Mona in my sightline the whole time, so that I could perceive the precise moment when the island disappeared. Or maybe that wasn’t possible. I blinked. I could already feel the fragile bonds among the people on the boat starting to loosen. I knew such losses were ordinary: Most contact is fleeting, most histories are forgotten. Ramón described Mona as a beautiful ruin, and I couldn’t disagree. The island dramatized every rupture, deepened every longing. But don’t we always make our lives among ruins, run to catch the bus over unmarked graves, cross paths with stateless people? I promised myself that when we landed, I would watch where I walked. I would keep trying to find out where I really stood.

Carina del Valle Schorske is a writer and translator living in Brooklyn. Her first book, “The Other Island,” is forthcoming from Riverhead. Her feature for the magazine about New York City’s Covid-era dance floors won a National Magazine Award. Christopher Gregory Rivera is a Puerto Rican photographer and director based in New York City and San Juan, Puerto Rico.

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COMMENTS

  1. Open Water 2: Adrift

    Open Water 2: Adrift (also known simply as Adrift or Open Water 2) is a 2006 German English-language psychological horror thriller film directed by Hans Horn [], starring Eric Dane, Susan May Pratt, Richard Speight, Jr., Niklaus Lange, Ali Hillis, and Cameron Richardson.The film was inspired by the short story Adrift by Japanese author Koji Suzuki, from which it took its original title, but ...

  2. Open Water 2: Adrift (2006)

    Open Water 2: Adrift: Directed by Hans Horn. With Susan May Pratt, Richard Speight Jr., Niklaus Lange, Ali Hillis. When a group of friends fail to lower the ladder of their boat, they find themselves stranded in the surrounding waters and struggle to survive.

  3. Open Water 2: Adrift (2006)

    When a group of friends fail to lower the ladder of their boat, they find themselves stranded in the surrounding waters and struggle to survive. Amy, her husband James and their baby Sarah travel to Mexico to sail in the yacht of their reckless friend Dan with their common friends Zach and Lauren and celebrate the thirtieth birthday of Zach.

  4. Adrift (2006) (Film)

    Adrift (2006) Adrift is a 2006 survival thriller film directed by Hans Horn. The film was inspired by a short story of the same name by Japanese author Koji Suzuki, from which it took its title, but its promotional material claimed the film was based on actual events. The film is about a group of friends who go on a boating holiday, only to ...

  5. Open Water 2: Adrift (2006)

    With the baby alone in the boat and stranded in the open sea, they panic and their desperation lead them to a tragic fight for survival. "Open Water 2 Adrift" is another great movie about surviving in the ocean. The direction and the acting are superb, and the good screenplay has an ambiguous and confused conclusion.

  6. Open Water 2: Adrift

    Movie Info. Six long-time friends (Susan May Pratt, Richard Speight Jr., Niklaus Lange) try to stay afloat in the ocean after they forget to lower the ladder from a luxury yacht. Rating: R (Nudity ...

  7. Adrift (2006) Movie Review from Eye for Film

    Adrift is the story of a group of six former college friends who meet up to celebrate a birthday aboard a luxury yacht. Some miles out into the ocean, four of them decide to go for a swim. Young mother Amy declines, terrified of water after a traumatic incident in her childhood. In an attempt to cure her fear, loudmouth Zach grabs hold of her ...

  8. Open Water 2: Adrift

    A weekend cruise aboard a luxury yacht goes horribly awry for a group of old high school friends who forget to lower the ladder before they jump into the ocean for a swim. The boat proves impossible to climb, leaving them adrift, miles from shore. What started as a joyful reunion becomes a fight for survival.

  9. Open Water 2: Adrift

    Open Water 2: Adrift. Thriller 2007 1 hr 34 min iTunes. Available on Prime Video, iTunes. A weekend cruise aboard a luxury yacht goes horribly awry for a group of old high school friends who forget to lower the ladder before they jump into the ocean for a swim. The boat proves impossible to climb, leaving them adrift, miles from shore.

  10. ‎Adrift (2006) directed by Hans Horn • Reviews, film

    Synopsis. Fatigue. Hypothermia. Death. A weekend cruise on a luxurious party yacht goes horribly wrong for a group of old high-school friends when they get stuck in the water many miles from shore and a happy reunion turns into a fight for survival. Remove Ads.

  11. Open Water 2

    The premise is valid. A bunch of people on a yacht who jump off to swim, forget the ladder and are stuck in the water with a baby left on board. The remainder of what happens is just ridiculous and poorly written. ... They spend most of the movie staring straight at a square port in the side of the boat that no one tried to open. Within the ...

  12. Adrift movie review & film summary (2018)

    When Richard (Sam Claflin) and Tami (Shailene Woodley) meet in Tahiti, she's working in a marina, a girl already somewhat "adrift" but not really worried about it yet, and he is a yacht-owner who wants to sail around the world.Their love story involves jumping off cliffs, random laughter, and a conversation about flowers. There's not much substance to it, and the script (by Aaron Kandell ...

  13. History for Film/Adrift2006

    ''Adrift'' is a 2006 indie drama/thriller about a group of friends who go on a boating holiday, only to find themselves outside trapped in the ocean next to their boat after yacht, unable to climb back aboard as they forget forgot to put up a the boarding ladder that would allow them back on board.down. They spend their time alternating between bickering and trying to look for a solution ...

  14. 24 Movies Trapped At Sea

    24 Movies Trapped At Sea. Water, water everywhere, and not a damn way to get home. That's this week's gallery theme: Movies where we see people trapped on the open seas, inspired by Adrift, starring Shailene Woodley and Sam Claflin as two young lovers whose boat is incapacitated after sailing directly into a catastrophic hurricane (and with ...

  15. Best Movies About Being Stranded at Sea

    2 The Poseidon Adventure. 20th Century Fox. The very notion of being lost at sea is terrifying all in itself, but throw in the element of a capsized ship on the verge of being completely consumed ...

  16. Open Water 2: Adrift Ending Explained & Film Analysis

    The passengers of the yacht jumped into the sea, forgetting to prepare a ladder to get back. All of them died on the high seas. The scriptwriters used only the outline and the essence of this story in the film. The characters and details of the thriller are fictitious. What is the movie about. The film begins with shots taken with an amateur ...

  17. Friends Jumped Into The Ocean and Forgot to Lower the Boat Ladder

    Open Water 2: Adrift (2006). When a group of friends fail to lower the ladder of their boat, they find themselves stranded in the surrounding waters and stru...

  18. Adrift (2017)

    The major part of the film we see everyone swimming and floating and treading water around the boat, and endlessly bickering, fulminate, swear and calling each other idiots (and worse). Especially the women are constantly on the brink of hysteria, their screaming and shrieking pretty quick gets heavily on your nerves.

  19. Six Friends Jumped Into The Ocean and Forgot to Lower the Yacht Ladder

    When a group of friends fail to lower the ladder of their boat, they find themselves stranded in the surrounding waters and struggle to survive.Our team stri...

  20. Open Water 2: ADRIFT!1!

    Yep, that's the central dilemma: they forgot to lower the ladder, so they can't get back into the boat! They spend the rest of the movie bobbing in the water around the yacht. There's some character development stuff before before one of them bumps his head, another accidentally stabs himself, and a couple of them just swim off to die.

  21. 25 sailing movies for when you're knot shore what to watch

    5. Morning Light (2008) A riveting true-life adventure aboard the high-tech sloop Morning Light. Fifteen rookie sailors have one goal in mind: to be part of her crew, racing in one of the most revered sailing competitions in the world, the Transpac Yacht Race. Watch on Amazon. Rotten Tomatoes.

  22. 10 Best Boat Movies of All Time

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