Reality TV super-star Bethenny Frankel and her husband, Jason Hoppy, were lost at sea in September 2011 after a sailing trip went incredibly wrong.
Many people suggested that the event was staged, that the boat’s GPS system never went out – until this week when the ordeal aired on Mrs. Frankel’s reality TV show “Bethenny Ever After.”
This week viewers were able to see that the event really did happen, and it was quite a crazy experience for all involved.
Bethenny and Jason, along with her therapist, a Bravo film crew, and one other couple, were aboard a sailboat headed to Nantucket, Massachusetts. The boat was struck by a huge wave, causing the GPS system on the boat to malfunction.
What was supposed to be a 7-8 hour trip, turned into a scary 20 hour ordeal. There were about 10 people on the boat, stuck in the middle of the deep sea with no land or anybody nearby when the boat’s GPS system just stopped working.
Apparently, the boat trip was planned by her therapist and was supposed to be a relationship building experience for her and her husband. On the show, her therapist revealed that in his 35 years of sailing, he had never seen a boat’s GPS system just quit working.
“We got on it at 6 at night, it was freezing, we were in Block Island, we were laying down, my husband got terrible sea sickness and all of a sudden I felt a big crash. A wave hit us and we were in 10 feet of water when we should have been in 150 or some big number of feet, and the GPS system went out and the next thing you know I heard the captain saying, ‘Maria Cristina to the Coast Guard,'” Bethenny told Anderson Cooper on his television show this week.
“We were freaking out. We were with my camera crew and I was like, ‘Oh my God this is about them too.’ One of the guys can’t swim, we were panic stricken. So, by the way, to hear someone say that it was fake was very insulting because I was freaking out. … the whole thing was horrendous.”
Luckily for Bethenny and Jason, the Coast Guard was eventually able to rescue them, and the incident did end up bringing the couple closer together. “The good news, we did not argue — my husband and I — we actually got along very well. No one blamed anybody for dragging them on this ship of fools,” she laughs.
Mrs. Frankel was recently named as the top-earning celebrity mother, even more than huge celebrities such as Angelina Jolie and Gisele Bundchen. Her Skinny Girl brand reportedly made $55 million in earnings between May 2010 and May 2011. Cha-Ching!
