Abandon Ship! Bethenny Frankel Opens Up About Ill-Fated ‘Marriage Counseling’ Boat Trip

Mar. 17 2012, Published 10:00 a.m. ET

By Debbie Emery - RadarOnline.com Reporter

Bethenny Frankel was a fish out of water on a recent “marriage counseling” boating trip when what started as a team building exercise took a direct course to disaster.

The reality star opened up to Anderson Cooper on Monday’s episode of his talk show where she dished on the ill-fated soggy sail that left her stranded, but that many suspect was just a set up for the cameras.

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“What happened was we were on a boat with my therapist. My husband, myself and another couple. Which I know that's torture enough,” Frankel told Anderson. “My therapist told us he - I don't want to say team building - but he does these relationship building trips where he'll take two couples on a sail boat and it's about working together and towing the line and staying the course.”

Unfortunately, what Bethenny thought was going to be a glamorous sailing trip to an exotic location like St. Thomas ended up being a freezing cold jaunt to Block Island in the state of Rhode Island.

“My husband got terrible sea sickness and all of a sudden I felt a big crash, a wave hit us and the GPS went out and the next thing you know I heard the captain saying, 'Maria Cristina to the Coast Guard,’” recalled Bethenny.

“I mean, I'm not that sea worthy,” she said.

“It had never happened in 35 years of my therapist doing this. We were freaking out. We were with my camera crew and I was like, 'Oh my God this is about them too,' One of the guys can't swim, we were panic stricken,” explained Frankel, who is furious that viewers have accused the scary incident of being scripted.

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“To hear someone say that it was fake was very insulting because I was freaking out. My daughter was in Nantucket, I wasn't going to get to her, I had no cell service, I couldn't tell my nanny that I was going to be late and it made me think of all these things with her,” she said. “The whole thing was horrendous.”

The only good thing about the ordeal was that the Bethenny Ever After star, who as RadarOnline.com previously reported has felt “tortured” in her marriage, and her husband Jason Hoppy didn’t turn on each other when things got rocky. “We actually got along very well, no one blamed anybody for dragging them on this ship of fools.”