Did you know that cruise ships lose a passenger a month to an overboard incident? By the time the captain is informed of the tragedy, it’s often too late to turn his ship around. The sea consumes the body and, with it, the evidence of how the passenger made it to the water in the first place.
What about smaller craft, like sailing yachts? There are thousands of those transversing Earth’s oceans today.
This next part might be the story of a happy couple beginning their romantic love journey aboard a yacht. Let’s say they dream of sailing into a blue paradise and discovering island sanctuaries along the way but find out that life beyond the horizon doesn’t go quite like that.
The ocean confines people. There’s no escaping each other, no way out if things don’t turn out the way they imagined them to be.
Most people think of cruise sailing as a romantic and glamorous lifestyle. Salty skin, surf hair and a hunger for adventure. On paper, it sounds lovely.
Put the romance aside for the moment, sailing is actually a dangerous sport.
Whenever sailors leave sight of civilisation, they are on their own. That beautifulblue world out there is enormous. A boat is but a tiny speck on it. A human being is but a tiny speck on that speck — and people fall overboard all the time.
Love doesn’t last forever, not even in paradise.
Or maybe that’s just me.
I’ve never settled well. It’s more about experiencing new experiences, even if that new experience is a person. Long love just isn’t for me. There’s no new experience there. The lust fades. The rest of it is plain boring.
Chores. Responsibilities. Pregnancies.
The struggle is real.
Her tummy will grow, and so will her anxieties about the sea. She’ll ask why I don’t carry a satellite phone, and I’ll reply that I’ve never needed one. Nothing I say will matter. Her mood won’t improve.
“You can get off whenever you like, dear,” I’ll say.
A sudden wind change and a rolling sea are all I need to fix the problem. I’ll suddenly swing the wheel to one side and watch the boom sweep across the cockpit, taking her with it. She’ll end up between the waves and the seabed. You know the rest.
“Where did that nice chick go?” an old salty friend will ask in the home port. “She was a bit of alright.”
“She was. Jumped ship at Vanuatu.”
“Again? Shit. That’s what, four now?”
“Ha ha! Yeah, but I don’t mind. I get the best bits. He has the rest of them.”
“Too right! Beer mate?”
“Thanks, mate. Cheers.”
