ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. -- A teen boat crew is stuck in St. Augustine after the weather forced them to dock their ship at the marina.
And this is no ordinary group of young sailors.
These boys are considered "at-risk youth" and are in the foster care system. They are part of a program called Sail Future which allows them to sail around the state learning interpersonal and problem-solving skills while they earn high school credits.
Their old racing boat is the 65-foot boat and aptly called 'Defy the Odds' and these boys are learning to defy their own odds.
They described their sail from Cape Canaveral to St. Augustine Monday evening saying there were "crazy winds," and "the whole boat was rocking the whole time."
"Most of our sailing has been okay," said 16-year-old Julian Lafontin, "The last one [trip] was pretty rough, it was pretty aggressive like the whole boat was just rocking the whole time. Everything was all over the floor, everything came out of the shelves, everything was just all over the floor."
The group is in the middle of a three-month voyage. They started on the Gulf Coast of Florida with a plan to sail around the state and then back home.
However, the bad weather has delayed their journey
"We were planning to come to St. Augustine. We weren't planning to stay in St. Augustine for long," Captian Mike Long explained.
He and Hunter Thompson founded the Sail Future program.
"We do service projects and run a non-traditional high school. So everywhere we go, we are doing school in classrooms or service projects sites," said Long.
Most of these kids did not know anything about sailing. Some had never set foot on a boat before this program.
Seventeen-year-old Corbin Reed said has been in foster care since he was 9 years old.
"I was learning to do drugs, negative things," he remembered. "I ended up going into the system at nine years old and was in and out. I would go into the system and go back with my mom, I'd end up back on the streets doing bad things."
And Anthony Patel, 17, said, "I was really anti-social, stayed up inside my room all day, playing video games. Nothing productive."
And if you put these kids, or any 12 people onto a boat, "tensions flare. They go up in flames," Long nodded.
He said, that's the point of the program.
"Part of the point of the boat is to create conflict because what we need to be able to do to be successful is to work as a team and manage conflict in healthy, responsible ways," Long said.
Corbin says the boat has made him different. "This is my last chance at hope and I'm going to take it."
And Anthony knows a lot about him has changed. "My entire attitude and demeanor towards life. I didn't really have ambitions and goals until I came here."
He is the boat's chef, and now he wants to own his own restaurant.
"You learn to deal with things right then and there, you learn that you can't really escape from your fears, you have to address things right there. You learn that if you don't do your job, it affects the other person -- it's just a chain, you have to work as a team," said Julian.
Literally sailing through some rough waves may just help teach these teenagers to manage the storms of life better -- and even help them dream.