I watched this premier episode last night:

Sharon Novak did a 171 day solo sailing trip and web-cammed it for [to the best of what I remember) some organization or website that she was a part of or headed.

It fascinated me.

The problem is that the show (including what they tried to make viewers think was real webcam stuff) was a reenactment.

They showed the shadow of some huge sea creature swimming about her boat after she got into the water to find out why the motor stopped working after something hit the boat. In the end, she fell overboard after something again hit her boat (while checking out the abandoned boat of someone who had put in a distress call about some creature in the water. The boat supposedly had blood all over it) and perished.

I've googled and googled and found nothingabout the real story. My opinion of the family of Discovery Channels has dropped several notches.

Does anyone know the real story?

I'll be the first to apologize if the true story can be found and it turns out that the Lost Tapes episode was at least partially and fairly based on a true story.

Couchcarrot

Here is a link from Wikipedia, a generally reliable source, which seems
to confirm your suspicion:

Lost Tapes - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

RickJ

I'm surprised that snopes does not have anything on this story. I hunted at snopes.com looking for a way to suggest an entry but did not find one.

Maybe this thread will be a prompt for them to get something there

Bustinka

RickJ

It was all fake...all reenactments. For what the show proposes, I'd think they'd show some actual footage...especially in this case where the whole story was supposedly based on the girl's filmed trip.

Broccoli

I also watched the episode of Lost Tapes with Sharon Novak. At first, I thought it seemed staged, but the supposed purpose of having webcams onboard was so that she could "broadcast" to people (I believe on the web only) everything that she did during her trip. So, I thought, "OK, it seems staged because she is "putting on a show" for viewers." I could accept that. However, two BIG points stick out that make the validity of this story questionable. First, when she falls off the boat and her boyfriend tells her (via speaker??) to cut herself loose and swim to the back of the boat because she is too weak to pull herself up on the side of the boat. What kind of an idiot would tell someone to cut themselves free of a tether meant to keep them from floating away from the boat in the first place?! Second, as previously mentioned by another answer, the sail was miraculously fixed so that the wind caught it causing the boat to float away so fast that Sharon couldn't keep up.

This is just another case of the "entertainment" industry assuming that viewers are stupid.

NeedKarma

And everything that is webcast can be recorded very easily so that's another area of wonder. Too many red flags about this voyage of hers.

RickJ

Yep. There's not a hint, anywhere on the web, that Novak is a real person or that her voyage was "broadcasted" anywhere.

Sadly, I'm seeing more and more crap like this even on the History Channel and the Science Channel.

Like just last night there was a SUPERBLY STUPID show on about the "Lost Book of Nostradamus".

What a bunch of HOOEY it was!

Broccoli

The "entertainment" industry seems to have run out of original ideas, so they are putting out a bunch of crap. Over the last few years I have been finding fewer and fewer programs that actually hold any interest for me.

RickJ

It's too bad that the likes of the Discovery, History and Science channels can't stick to good stuff like...well, like History and Science!

Sheesh.