In 1983, Tami Oldham Ashcraft was only 23 years old when she and her fiancé set out to sail the Pacific Ocean. She and her fiancé, Richard Sharp, set off to sail from Tahiti to San Diego aboard Hazana. Back in 1983, weather reports only came through every 3 hours. By the time Tami and Richard knew what Hurricane Raymond was, the storm was already on top of them.

Richard was swept overboard and never found. Tami was knocked unconscious for 27 hours. When she woke up, she was alone on a dismasted, half-destroyed boat 1,500+ miles from the nearest land — without a working motor, radio, or rescue in sight.

In Part I of this Survival Summer two-parter, we walk through Tami's extraordinary life before the storm — the VW bus, the beach salsa business, the dockside love story — and come right to the edge of one of the most harrowing  ...