Cabin Fever (TV series)
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- This article is about the reality TV show. For other uses, see Cabin fever (disambiguation).
Cabin Fever is an RTÉ reality TV show which was meant to have been broadcast over eight weeks starting on June 3, 2003. It is named after cabin fever. It consisted of a group of 10 contestants chosen specially for the show, most of whom had no sailing experience (though they had received a quick course in sailing technique prior to setting sail), who were to be put on the 90 foot (27.4 metre), two-masted schooner with a professional crew of two. The wind-powered sailing ship would then sail around the Irish coast. Each week one contestant was scheduled to quite literally "walk the plank" after being voted off the ship by TV viewers. The final surviving contestant was to win one hundred thousand euro.
Disaster struck however two weeks into the broadcast, when on 13 June 2003 the ship ran aground off Tory Island, a small island off the North-west coat of Ireland. All the 9 remaining contestants1 and two crew were rescued, but the wooden sailing ship broke up on the rocks. Ironically the accident was not filmed by the RTÉ film crew; they had left the ship some hours earlier to catch some sleep after 15 hours continuous filming. The incident was however filmed by a local man who happened to have been recording the schooner's movements at the moment she ran aground. The Irish media made much tongue-in-cheek mention of the fact that the disaster occurred on Friday the 13th, a date often linked to supposed curses and disasters and also the fact that the ship's name had been changed for the programme: sailing lore suggests that any ship which is renamed prior to setting sail will meet with disaster.
RTÉ and the programme makers, Coco TV, announced that all money earned from phone-in votes in the previous week (and which due to the disaster would not now lead to some contestant leaving the ship on 16 June as planned), would be donated to the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, which supplies lifeboat coverage around the Irish coast.
RTÉ and Coco TV hired a second boat. The captain was replaced and the show began again, though three of the original team declined to come back. They were replaced by new contestants. The series was further hit when the boat was hit by engine trouble, but the problem was ultimately solved. Partly due to the controversies, the series regularly topped the TAM ratings on RTÉ.
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1 One contestant of the original ten had already 'walked the plank' the previous week.
