The sky and the sea at night are lost to a darkness unlike the darkness of land. When it is very dark the horizon becomes very close and moves ahead of you differently than the daytime horizon.
The Captain and The Kid had been watching what seemed like land drifting northward. With The Kid's keen eyesight, we determined that the land was at least two large ships moving north and possibly intersecting our course eastward. The speed of the two and the distance between them gave me the idea to split the two and pass between the vessels. As we were adjusting sail and increasing horsepower to motor sail our passage The Kid caught something white flash in the black space where we would make our way.
"I saw it too. What is that?"
We knew it could not be rocks because the first vessel passed right over that course. We had now both seen some flash of white or reflection like breakwater.
The odd stories about the Bermuda Triangle are not stories this Captain pays much heed to. We have had odd occurrences while sailing these waters, but odd will often come with being on the ocean. The ocean is different travel than land travel. Every moment can be its own escape with its own adventure. Getting away by sea gets you away to an escape from the moment you cast off, or haul anchor, if not before. The water beneath you is always moving, thus it has been somewhere and is going to other places. On the water you become like the water in how and why you move about. It is not just about a destination, each moment becomes its own unique destination, especially when you watch the water color change, or feel its thickness, and visit with its inhabitants. The sea is about romance and passion and escape.
We luffed the main and throttled down instinctively while staring into the black space before us between the two large vessels. Our radio crackled a voice we could not understand, then static, so we turned it down. We need to watch and maneuver without distraction or error for what may be dead ahead.
"There!" The Kid hollered above the deafening of the silent darkness.
I brought our sloop hard-a-port and then again. The blackness was not space. The blackness was part of the vessel. We had not been watching two very large ships. This was one! We do not know its length or the type of vessel. It was like a container ship and barge in one. Either end was tall like freighters, but in between was quite low and all dark like a barge. We knew if The Kid had not seen that something we would have hit and been damaged or sunk. A faster boat making the same mistake would have collided for sure. There are stories about fishing vessels hitting freighters and barges at night with fatal consequences.
As the large vessel crawled by us there was no noticeable life, nor any acknowledgment it saw us. It just kept steaming north. We floated for a few minutes. Our Perkins diesel was idling, but our hearts were up around 5500 rpm.
"That was so close." The Kid whispered with a hissing on the s of close, not meant to be heard, but just to express, letting pressure out.
I inhaled deeply, not remembering if I had been breathing, but knowing I was empty and all my muscles were hard with tension.
When you getaway to escape, it is always crucial to keep what's real nearby in case you need it in an emergency. It would not take long for us to recover, to continue our getaway to the Bahamas and to escape among the islands and the people. At landfall, night or morn, we would break out the sundowners and lay back on board to recall our safe passage through the lower quadrant of the Bermuda Triangle.
Oh, yes, after the ship went by our radio and GPS came back. Our friend astern caught up to us in port.
The Captain and The Kid
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