Dream – Night of 2026-01-06
Posted On January 6, 2026
- My dad has bought a large 50 foot sailboat, and we are sailing it around the world
- We are currently somewhere off the coast of South America in the Atlantic ocean
- I notice we seem to be going very fast. The boat is up on plane which is something a displacement hull sailboat should not be able to do. (A boat is “up on plane” when it’s moving fast enough that the hull lifts and skims across the surface of the water rather than pushing through it).
- I walk to the helm station on port (left) side of the cockpit and see that the throttle is set to 7,000 RPM. Usually we cruise at a much lower 3,000 RPM. That explains why we’re going so fast.
- I reach up to pull the throttle back, and as I start inching the throttle lever back a bit, I see the brown tip of a rock, ringed with white at the waterline up ahead.
- It passes us on the port side only ten or twenty feet away.
- At first I do not react, I am too stunned to see a rock like that in the middle of the ocean, out of sight of land.
- “Did you see that?”, I ask.
- “See what?”
- I don’t understand how he could have NOT seen that rock go by.
- I look ahead of us and realize it is worse. The water up ahead is not the deep and solid blue that we have been sailing through, but instead is interspersed with various shades of browns. More rocks.
- Soon they are passing underneath and beside us, still far enough below us that we do not hit, but I am worried about our keel, that long fin made of fiberglass and lead slicing through the water below us, and we are still traveling fast.
- Now there are rocks above water passing by on our port and starboard, and finally my dad reaches up and pulls the throttle back to idle and the transmission out of gear.
- The large boat slides to a stop and we find ourselves in a maze of rocks and the long channels of water between and connecting them. We are trapped. I look over the side and can see the bottom clearly.
- We discuss how we should have seen them on the radar, until we realize that we had forgotten to adjust the radar to scan the very surface of the water. It was set up so that it would see larger ships far away, but would not have alerted us to the rocks right in front of us, which at first were barely above the top of the water.
- We cannot turn around because the channel we are in is too narrow, and are afraid that if we try to motor our way anywhere that we will hit bottom. So we get out and swim, trying to push the large boat to safety instead.
- Impossibly we begin to succeed, somehow we are able to get the boat through a couple channels, but each time we do the keel hits the shallow bottom between the rocks, and the boat leans over to one side enough that much of the topside is under water.
- I begin to fear that water is making its way into the boat through the hatches and open companionway.
- We make it to one last spot between two rocks that we think if we can get the boat through, we’ll be able to motor the rest of the way back to open water. It is shallower here than any of the other rocks we have passed between, the boat rolls onto her side one last time, and more this time than any other. But we are through, the water deepens, ten, twenty, forty feet deep. Then something happens. A wave passes under the boat from the stern, and the water that had in fact been collecting inside the boat sloshes to the bow, which forces it underwater and the stern rises into the air, much like the Titanic. And the result is the same, more water rushes in from the topside hatches and it drags the heavy boat fully underwater.
- Treading water, we watch as she spirals down to the bottom like one of those helicopter seeds that fall off trees in the Fall. She reaches the bottom and we both watch as she comes to rest beneath us. The water here is very clear, and we can see the boat lying on her side below us. From where we swim it looks like we should be able to reach down and grab her to pull her back up. But at that depth it is too far even to swim down.
- “Well,” I say, “this sucks.” We look at each other while treading water. I look back down at the boat and then back to my dad and say, “My wallet is down there.”
- The absurdity of the comment somehow makes of both laugh. Yes, my wallet is down there, and his, and everything else that was on the boat, and the boat.
About The Author
