Good news is that it rained.
Soon as it started I opened my mouth and all three water jugs. I caught the river of water running off the crease in the bimini and filled a jug and a half as fast as if I’d turned on the hose.
Bad news is that it stormed.
Waves crashed the side of the skiff with cracks loud as gunfire. Stinging sideways rain pelted me in the face. The sky went black as a cave and next thing I knew me and the Montauk were bucking up and down like a roller coaster playing bumper cars.
A wave twice as tall as me sent a gush of water over the bow. The nose of the Montauk bucked down. Another wave crashed over the back. Water ran through the hull up to my shins.
Everything started to float.
The dry box. The gas tanks. The other life jacket. The tackle box.
For a minute I couldn’t tell if I was standing in the boat or swimming.
But I told you the Montauk is unsinkable.
All I could do was hold on to the center console, leaning against the bucking sea as lightning crackled on every side, lighting up the tips of the waves and, out in the distance, something else.
Something tall.
Maybe a ship’s mast.
A life jacket floated right past me, out of the boat into the open ocean as a breaker washed across the bow. The dry box skimmed over the gunnel on the next wave. I let go of the console to snatch at the flotsam. But then the Montauk bucked so hard I almost went overboard myself.
In the middle of all the rolling and slip-sliding I had an awful thought. The shadow I saw in the distance, the thing as tall as a ship’s mast–it might be my chance at rescue. But the very last flare and the ship-to-shore radio were inside the dry box, which was now twenty feet from the boat.
My lifeline was floating away.
Pretty sure I said a few swears and jumped after it.
I splashed down next to the life jacket I wasn’t wearing, ran my arm through the neck hole, and swam toward the dry box.
If you could call it swimming.
The waves crashed so high and hard that it was more like riding a bull. Except the bull was the size of a house.
I’d get sucked away from the dry box and then pushed back toward it within an arm's length. And then another wave would pull me away again and I’d start all over. The Montauk threatened overhead as it slapped the ocean sometimes inches from where I was bobbing.
If it had hit me it would have knocked me out or worse, although I can’t imagine too much worse than being knocked out in the water in an ocean squall.
I guess I got lucky.
I said some more swears and even a few prayers and I don’t know which one worked but somehow I ended up with one arm through the life jacket gripped onto the handle of the dry box and the other arm hanging on to the transom at the back of the boat.
That’s how I rode out the storm.
As if I was a wobbling booger at the end of an old man’s nose.
And then it was only rain and I was still there and so was the Montauk. I pushed the dry box over the back of the boat and tried to pull myself in after.
Except I couldn’t do it.
Too much sun or too much cold or too little food or I don’t even know.
My muscles just plain old refused.
Worse still, they started to shake. My whole body trembled. Only a little at first but then it was every muscle, all at once.
It happens fast on the water, even on a hot day. If there’s no sun and you’re all wet and can’t get away from the wind, you end up with the shivers pretty quick.
I suppose it was a good thing the shark came to investigate.