My parents always told me to never sail alone. They were always adamant about it and made it the only rule to follow as kids… We saw it as a “oh my god’ moment whenever they would bring it up. We live on a rich island in the middle of the pacific and sailing is very common here. I got my boating license the day I turned sixteen and received a million dollar sail boat as a gift from my parents. There hasn’t been a weekend where I haven’t taken the boat out since.
I am currently 22, which means that I have been sailing for six years. I would say this makes me a very experienced sailor and so, occasionally, I defy my parents orders and take the boat out alone. I know, I know… Pretty stupid decision. Nothing had ever happened until this past weekend.
Laying in my dark room, a sudden buzz awoke me. I reached over to my nightstand and grabbed my phone, turning it on and killing the darkness in my room. My eyes adjusted and I saw a text from my friend Matt. He lives in California and told me that there is a party on an island around 50 miles away, and so I decided to go. I told my parents I was going to head to a party and they told me to get a friend or two to sail with. I told them that my friends were on their way but in reality I brushed them off and headed to the dock behind our house.
The First Hour:
I made the proper preparations and started sailing away. I turned on the engine in my sailboat to get me going out on the open water before continuing. I then sat in my cockpit and started watching Netflix. The bad thing about being on the open water is lack of communication with the outside world, however I was able to install a Starlink Maritime router in my boat which gave me access to the internet anywhere in the ocean.
I left my dock at around 4:00 and was expecting to get to the island anywhere between 7:00 or 8:00. Around one hour into my trip I noticed a grouping of clouds that looked less than friendly. I didn’t think that was possible as I checked the conditions before I left and they were completely clear, but this certainly wasn’t out of the ordinary, and these types of tiny storms would come and go very frequently where we lived.
The Second Hour:
During the second hour I went to my boat’s kitchen to grab a snack and when I returned my GPS seemed to not be showing the right location, hell it wasn’t showing any location at all. When I zoomed out this thing had my location right atop the Midway Atoll in the Pacific Ocean.
I mean this couldn’t be possible, I was some two thousand nautical miles from it… I assumed my GPS just needed to be reset but no matter how many times I reset it, it didn’t move my little red arrow off of the Midway Atoll. I decided to check my phone, and when I searched up “Current Location” in the search bar, it returned “Results not found for: “Current Location”, try a different query or search again.” This instantly gave me an extreme feeling of unease… How could google not give me a current location? I was connected to the internet… I decided to carry on because I was nearly half way there, and knew I’d have to get my GPS checked out before I left that island.
The Third Hour:
The third hour, my last hour and I was nearly there. I kept travelling South West, but then things headed south, again I noticed a grouping of clouds that didn’t seem to be there no less than five minutes ago. Then my compass started acting funny… That couldn’t be possible, this was a $5,000 compass, it wasn’t some cheap compass, but the dial was spinning in all sorts of directions.
The clouds started closing in, and slowly the rain started and I decided to stop sailing and text my friend that I wasn’t going to be able to make it and decided to cook myself dinner and go to sleep. I turned on some YouTube in my bedroom and started to close my eyes.
The Fifth Hour:
My room was dark. A sudden thump awoke me.
I jolted up in my bed in a cold sweat and searched around for my phone. I grabbed it and flashed the light around the room. Nothing, nothing was out of the ordinary. I reached for the light but to my surprise nothing happened when I flipped the switch.
*click*
The lights did not go on…
I got up and went to my engine room and that’s when I instantly felt sick to my stomach. The breaker door was open, there was no way the door could open without human interaction, and as I got closer I realize the breaker was manually turned off. My legs started going numb as I thought of all of the possibilities.
I flicked the breaker on and ran back to my room and grabbed my handgun. You’re probably wondering why I have a handgun, because although rare, pirates are still somewhat prevalent in the area, and it’s better to be safe than sorry. I started a search around my boat, clearing every cabinet and hiding spot.
The Sixth Hour:
After long I was back in my room, still disgruntled at the fact that my breaker had been turned off. I mean, I was trying to tell myself that the breaker had somehow turned itself off, but I knew in reality no matter how I tried to reassure myself, it wasn’t possible for it to turn off like that.
I sat there, handgun in hand waiting for anything, anything out of the ordinary.
The Seventh Hour:
After some time I started to calm down and went back to watching YouTube in an attempt to keep myself calm, and that’s when it happened. When it first happened I was so scared I couldn’t even write in words the fear I experienced. The boat shook with an extreme jolt and the lights started to flicker. I knew that someone or something had crashed into me, but in reality it was a lot worse.
As I climbed onto the deck of the boat, I nearly had a heart attack, along with the blaring horn coming from my boats speakers, I realized I was staring at a massive military boat. But this boat seemed off, the boat was rusted, and I mean as if it was constructed solely of rusted metals… I started hearing an alarm and ran to my cockpit to see this message flashing in bright red: “Collision detected on bow side. Water detected in hull. Please use the evacuation plan and evacuate the ship. A Mayday message has been sent to the nearest coast guard and harbor.”
I grabbed a radio and emergency supplies, and stuffed them into a backpack, and I thought that the boat I had crashed into was my only hope. I saw a ladder that I could easily jump onto that lead right into the boat’s deck, and so with all of my might I jumped onto the ladder and climbed onto the boat. By the time I reached the deck I was out of breath.
“There goes a million dollars.”
I thought.
The Eighth Hour:
I started exploring the boat, and realized this thing was OLD. It was probably used sometime around World War two. The rooms were extremely dark and cobwebs and old decorations lined the rooms, most had fallen at this point and littered the floor, making it uneven to walk on and made me trip a few times. Again something about this boat made me feel weird. How could there be a boat here that has been abandoned for so long… Surely it had to be a missing boat from World War One or Two that was never recovered.
As I walked through the halls I thought I was hallucinating… Was I… Was I hearing singing?
“And here’s to all good fellows on land and sea, singing the battle song of liberty. Here’s to our banner of red, white and blue.”
I started walking, slowly and calculated, towards the sound of the singing.
“So get Old Glory, we’ll make ‘em sorry that they ever dreamed of this fight. We’re on our way with a Hip! Hooray!. Just to do what we know to be right. So here’s to Uncle Sammy, faithful and true.”
It was American voices I was hearing. This eased the tension, maybe this ship wasn’t abandoned after all…
“It’s the roar and rattle of freedom’s battle that’s calling us over the sea, where mighty foe has challenged us, boys, it’s up to you and me”
It was a bit weird that a boat that wasn’t abandoned didn’t have it’s masthead, sidelights or stern lights on. I started walking a bit faster towards the sound with a bit of anger in my step, as I was going to confront this crew for crashing into me, but that’s when things took an unexpected turn…