Page 55 of Weathering The Storm

I thought about it sometime after nightfall, when everything went from dark to black and the waves built from rolling hills to rocky mountains. There was a thin, sobering thread of recognition.

This one is different. This is the storm that becomes the new benchmark of comparison for all other rough days at sea. The one that reminds you how alive you are, because of how quickly it’ll kill you if your attention lapses.

This is the storm we’ll be talking about when we’re old and gray, and the young guys at the pub are pestering us for stories about all our time spent at sea.

I haven’t let myself think about that since, though. I can’t afford to.

I keep my head down, and I chip ice, and I watch out for my crew, and I do what has to be done.

And I try not to worry too hard about Nick, all alone up in that wheelhouse. Running on whatever’s left in his tank after far too many fucking hours at the helm.

He’d argue that I’ve got the worse end of this arrangement, being turned into a human ice cube down here while he’s up in the heated bridge. He’d be wrong though.

I don’t envy the crushing weight of nature he takes upon his shoulders, assumes ashisresponsibility.

Captaining a ship in a storm like this is almost entirely intuition. Split second decisions, one after another, all with life-threatening consequences. It’s the confidence of knowing your vessel enough to guide her through the chaos, and the humility of never knowing what the ocean will throw at you next.

Nick’s brought it up a couple times now—why I’ve never gone for my captain’s license. My answers have all been true. I’m more than content where I’m at. But a bigger part of the answer is thatheis the reason.

He was born for this. Fair and just. Calculative with risks and quick to always make the right call. Calm under pressure, no matter how much he takes on.

I’ve admired Nicolas Lundvall from the moment we first set out together, but never as much as I do right now.

Never as much as when I feel everything start to go terribly, terribly wrong.

After four years, I know theSuoja. You can’t spend that long on a vessel without absorbing her rhythms, the same way you can recognize your favorite songs from a few seconds of audio or your favorite book from its opening line.

I know the way this boat rises and levels out. The exact motion of her recovery.

Which is why I know, before I can pinpoint how, that something has changed.

Creak. One. Two… Three.

Slam.One. Two… Three.

It’s not a sound. It’s not anything that has a name. It’s a feeling that starts under my feet, spreading through my boots and traveling until it pries its fingers into my chest.

Creak. One… Two… Three.

Slam.One… Two… Three.

TheSuoja’s rhythm is off. The way she crests the next swell is sluggish. And when she rolls—the whole deck tilting in a long, sickening lean to the port side—she comes back up slower than she should.

One. Two. Three. Four.

She corrects. But later than I’ve ever felt her correct, and with less surety.

The ice. I see it everywhere the beam of my headlamp falls. Thick crystalline-white build-up is caked on the railings, on the pot stack, across the top of the wheelhouse. Forming jagged sculptures over every part of the ship’s infrastructure.

No matter how much we remove, there’s water everywhere. Sloshing onto the deck in angry waves and coming down from overhead in sheets. It’s freezing faster than we can chip it.

We’ve been out here for hours, fighting a battle I doubt we could win with a crew twice our size. And with just the four of us? We’ve been losing.

Weight has been accumulating in all the wrong places. I don’t know how much, but I do know something I wish I could be ignorant to. TheSuojais taking too long to correct.

Creak. One. Two. Three… Four.

Slam.One. Two. Three… Four.