Documenting a Sea Story with Words & Sounds

[Note: the image above is an original watercolor by the author]

As I continue an intensely personal journey documenting my writing in multiple media, it occurred to me what every good podcaster already knows: while offering the audio presentation, simultaneously offer a written synopsis or outline of its content. Okay, so that’s been done.

In this post, I offer you a variation on that theme.

How about a short story of just six hundred words that you and I will read together?

I suggest while I read the story aloud for you (with a few sound effects), you can simultaneously read the script to yourself. Or…

So let’s do this. Start the audio and follow along with the script that follows, okay?

C’mon, it’ll be fun for both of us!

***

First Night Passage
by GK Jurrens

The evening refused to evolve with grace. The sky exploded in angry protest while the air crackled with an impatient energy that tingled the fuzz on the back of my neck. Ours would not be an easy passage, contrary to the forecast. 

The lumpy water’s surface became a portent of gut-twisting challenges this night. With gratitude, I remembered my first mate and chief contingency planner had prepared a thermos of hot soup we could sip when descending to the cabin became too dangerous. We always welcomed liquid warmth while keeping watch in the throat of a dark tempest. 

Our traditional forty foot motor-sailer provided a rock solid platform with old but trustworthy gear. If only our personal confidence in undertaking this first overnight passage offshore spoke to us as loudly as the thunderbolts now shattering our confidence. All would be OK, though, wouldn’t it?

As sunset marched over the horizon toward the starboard side of our stalwart little ship, we shortened sail, just in case. So we would not need to trifle with that risky task in stormy darkness. The winds and seas continued to escalate. The single diesel engine drove the boat, along with the sails, as an additional security blanket. 

Torrential curtains of rain pressed down on us with little prelude. Our running lights disappeared at the top of the mast a mere fifty-five feet away. Why is it that darkness evokes shadowy doubts of ravenous monsters like a sunny afternoon never can? And experience is no tonic, as every sortie harbors its own mysteries. We’re experiencing the leading edge of a normal cold front—nothing to fear. We believed that lie. No choice. 

For the next twenty-seven hours and a hundred and thirty nautical miles to the South, we resign ourselves to be strong as we charge into Stygian ink. Our resolve not as sterling as in a safe harbor a few hours ago, we would remain strong enough, long enough. Simply put, it had to be so. 

Confined to our helm seats by the erratic pitch and yaw of our small but stalwart island of refuge, we share our never-so-tasty soup from the thermos. We look forward to the end of this night when we will delight that our first nocturnal offshore passage would be an adventurous memory. 

As shore lights off our port side sink further beneath distant unseen waves, our course takes us ever farther offshore. We now revel in the insular solitude of the moment, despite the constant barrage of wind and waves and rain battering our hull and our senses. Noisy silence. 

Isn’t this why we go to sea: fear, born of courage, and the desire for some small sense of adventure? Not too much, mind you, but enough to remind ourselves of an energizing alternative to wishing away our golden years in some shore-side condominium. Golf and Dominoes and Bridge can come later after we lose our sea legs, or when they grow to hurt too much. 

But by then, we’ll have memories, perhaps lying a little about the magnitude of our courage on nights such as these.

I wonder, What are the kids and grandkids doing right now? Do they wonder what the old folks are doing? Do they imagine what boring lives we must lead compared to their every exciting moment of evolving prepubescent events bombarding them non-stop? 

The paradox? As we grow tired of this adventure, we will no doubt become, once again, impatient for the next adventure to begin. 

Such are the vagaries of our thoughts during our first night passage offshore.

***

So how did it go? Did you read and listen? Or just read? Or just listen? Isn’t it nice to have choices?

With pen in hand,

Gene