In August 1981, off the coast of Florida, a routine day on the water turned into a fight for survival.
Tamara Ennis faced a nightmare few could even imagine — and lived to tell the terrifying tale.
Three miles from shore
Forty-four years ago, Tamara Ennis was a 21-year-old hotel restaurant waitress in Daytona Beach, with her whole life ahead of her.
But a terrifying incident would change everything. It all began in August 1981, when Tamara sailed about a mile off the shore of Ormond Beach, Florida, with friends Randy Cohen, Christy Wapniarski, and Daniel Perrin, the owner of the boat.
The four were on a 17-foot catamaran when, as Tamara later told A&E on its YouTube Survivor series, she noticed “dark clouds and lightning closing in on us.”
Believing they were “too late” to get out of danger, the group decided to stay and “wait it out.” At that point, they were three miles from shore — roughly the length of 53 football fields — far enough to be dangerous, but close enough that land was just a distant line on the horizon
Unfortunately, a leak suddenly appeared in one of the catamaran’s pontoons, and the boat flipped over. The four friends, having set out without life jackets, held onto the last intact pontoon, struggling to keep their bodies afloat in the shark-infested water.
”We were just quiet”
Tamara recalled the terrifying moment when the Coast Guard failed to spot them:
“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.”
They drifted alone, waiting for help that didn’t come, until dawn finally broke.
At that point, Tamara decided their best chance was to swim to shore. She reassured 19-year-old Christy Wapniarski, the only member of the group who couldn’t swim, that the salt water would help her float when the going got tough.
Reflecting on the ordeal, Coast Guardsman James Williamson told media: “They should never have left the boat, even if it was leaking.”
Tamara, who was a swimmer on her high school team, led the group into the water.
But just an hour into their swim, tragedy struck when Christy was attacked by a shark.
“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,” Tamara told A&E.
Thought she was drowning
At first, Tamara thought Christy might be drowning, but it soon became clear what had really happened when the shark violently threw her out of the water and dragged her back under.
She explained, “I realized 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.
According to Tamara, Christy was calling out to her boyfriend Randy, ‘I’ve been bitten! Come here, Randy! Swim to me. I think I’m going to die!’”
“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’d be dead. She was completely pale, completely white, I knew she’d lost all her blood.”
Her hack for surviving
Terrified for her own life, Tamara decided not to go back and instead kept swimming. But soon, a sudden bump against her revealed another shark nearby.
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 stay calm, she told herself she needed to think like a fish, reminding herself she had just as much right to be in the water as the shark did. After five grueling hours, Tamara lost sight of Randy and Daniel, they were separated by strong currents.
Tamara had to navigate alone in the water while avoiding a ‘feeding frenzy’ of sharks. She also battled a rip tide that separated her from the shore.
By swimming sideways, she finally managed to break free, and a lifeguard spotted her 100 yards off the beach.
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’.”
Christy’s body was never found
An hour after Tamara was rescued, police found Daniel walking along the beach.
Amazingly, he was unharmed and didn’t require immediate medical attention. A short time later, Randy was located as well and had to be airlifted by ambulance helicopter to the hospital.
Sadly, Christy’s body was never found.
Despite the nightmare, Tamara returned 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.”