06-25-2023, 01:43 PM
In 1974, he went with his first wife, Kristen Tomassi, to Cozumel, to try and patch up a marriage that had suffered from numerous affairs on both sides. The area has some of the world’s best marlin fishing, and one day they and another couple decided to hire a deep-sea boat. Two miles out, a severe storm began to pound the boat; after a frightening hour or so, the wind and rain subsided, but Branson and his wife concluded that they were in the storm’s eye. Convinced that the boat could not withstand another attack, they urged the others to try to swim with them to safety. Nobody was willing to join them. “We stripped off to our underwear and the fisherman gave us a plank of wood from the bottom of the boat,” Branson recalled. Somehow, despite ten-foot waves, the couple fought their way to shore. Neither the boat nor its occupants were ever seen again.