Remember the crazy tale of Bethenny Frankel, her husband, some friends, and a Bravo camera crew going for a three (OK, eight) hour boat tour and being lost at sea for 20 hours. Too crazy to be true, right? Well, now one of her rescuers is claiming it was all staged.

The official story was that Bethenny and crew went out for a boat ride and the boat malfunctioned and the GPS was busted and the captain had to call the Coast Guard to get them rescued. Tim Russell, the man who towed the boat back to shore says that it was all a set up. Not only was the boat working, but so was the GPS. They didn't even get the Coast Guard, but Russell, who operates an independent towing company, took them back to shore, even though he didn't have to tow them because the boat was working.

Yeah, it just seemed like really good luck this dramatic event would happen on one of the days Frankel was filming her show Bethenny Ever After.... And we all know that the "reality" on any of these shows is in big gigantic quotation marks.

Bethenny is now fighting back and claiming that the events happened as she first described them. "I wish that boat trip were fiction rather than the nightmare it actually was. My truth is stranger than fiction." Yes, her defense is basically, "Yup, crazy shit happens to me."

I really want to side with Bethenny on this one, possibly because I'm a little bit scared of her. Of all the strange things you'd cook up for a reality show, where did she ever dream up getting lost at sea? What is this, a Victorian novel? If she did fake it, we should at least give her points for originality. But the evidence sure is stacking up against her.

[Image via Pacific Coast News]