It was one of those days that reminds you the ocean really doesn’t give a damn about your plans, your schedule, or your opinion of yourself. The kind of day where the sea looks you dead in the eye and says, “Alright sailor… let’s see what you’re made of.”
We were out in the Alenuihāhā Channel, that stretch of water between the Big Island and Maui that has humbled better sailors than me and probably buried a few too. The wind had been blowing a steady 55 knots all morning, screaming through the rigging like a freight train possessed by demons. The seas were stacked up to around 30 feet, gray-blue mountains marching across the Pacific with white tops blowing clean off them.
Now before you think this was some sort of horror show, understand something about sailors: after a while your idea of “not too bad” gets a little twisted.
We were running downwind with the seas quartering behind us, and Lost Soul — my 68-foot, 42-ton ketch — was actually handling it pretty sweet. Triple-reefed main, just a rag of headsail out front, and she was still trucking along at a respectable eight, maybe eight-and-a-half knots. The old girl loved weather like this. Hell, sometimes I think she preferred it.
I was hand-steering because the autopilot — affectionately named Fred — had long since thrown in the towel. Every time we’d surf down the face of one of those swells, Fred would panic like a tourist on his first carnival ride and start hunting all over the compass. So it was me on the helm, soaked in salt spray, grinning like an idiot.
That’s another thing about sailors people don’t understand. Sometimes the conditions that would make sane people cry are exactly the ones that make us feel alive.
Then something strange happened.
The boat suddenly stood upright.
Now in 55 knots with a reefed-down sail plan, that doesn’t happen. At least not naturally. At the same instant, the headsail started flogging violently, snapping like rifle shots.
I remember thinking, “Well now… that ain’t right.”
Because there’s only one thing that can suddenly block that much wind.
I turned around.
And there it was.
An absolute wall of water.
Not a wave. A moving cliff.
I’ve told this story a hundred times and people always think sailors exaggerate wave heights. We do. Constantly. But this one? This one was real. I know because my mast was 74 feet tall and this bastard was looking down at us.
And the really bad part?
The top of it was crystal clear.
Now if you’ve spent enough years offshore, you know exactly what that means. A clear lip means the wave is curling. And if it’s curling… it’s about to break.
Right about then I had one of those wonderfully useless moments of total clarity.
“Boy,” I thought, “this could ruin your whole afternoon.”
See, what we’d run into was a rogue wave. Two large seas crossing each other at just the wrong angle, stacking into one monster. Two 30-foot waves combining forces like a couple of drunken bar fighters. And because we happened to be sitting down in the trough between them, the thing towered over us like a liquid skyscraper.
Lost Soul started climbing the face exactly like she was built to do. Heavy displacement boats are honest creatures. They don’t fight the ocean; they negotiate with it.
But because we were quartering across the wave, the starboard side started losing water beneath her while the port side still had plenty. Slowly at first, then faster, she rolled hard to starboard.
Then the wind hit us again.
Fifty-five knots filling what little sail we had left.
Over she went.
I jammed my arm through the big wooden wheel and locked myself onto it like a rodeo cowboy too stupid to let go. The boat rolled past 45 degrees… then 60… then suddenly the mast went past horizontal and the deck became a wall.
And there I was, hanging from the helm in midair like some sort of pirate piñata waiting to get smashed open by the Pacific Ocean.
Now this would probably be a good time to mention that I wasn’t wearing my harness.
See, aboard Lost Soul I had a standing rule: in bad weather everyone wears a harness except the skipper.
That policy was undergoing revision at the moment.
The wave broke on us with a sound I felt more than heard. Not like thunder — more like a building collapsing underwater. Tons and tons of green water curled over the boat, and somehow an air pocket formed around me beneath it. Everything went strangely silent and slow.
That’s the weird thing about moments where you might die. Your brain stops operating on normal time.
I looked over toward the storm room on the starboard side where Jody had been sitting. Through the craziness I could see her plastered calmly against the inside window, still strapped into her seat while the world turned sideways around her.
And I remember thinking — no kidding — how amazingly cool it was to be dry underneath an entire ocean.
Now physics is a funny thing. Forty-two tons moving at nine knots doesn’t just politely stop because a wave says so. As we came over the top, the mast dug into the water and the keel — carrying nearly 20,000 pounds of ballast — decided it had had enough nonsense.
Slowly, majestically, Lost Soul righted herself.
One moment I was hanging in space. The next my boots slammed back onto the deck and I was standing at the helm again staring forward through the dodger like nothing had happened.
Except the mainsail.
The triple-reefed main was holding what looked like half of the Pacific Ocean.
And remember, this whole thing was happening on an absolutely brilliant sunny Hawaiian day. Blue sky. Bright sunlight. Trade winds howling. As the boat came upright, water poured from the sail in shimmering sheets, sparkling in the sunlight like Niagara Falls dumping onto my deck.
It was one of the most beautiful things I’d ever seen.
I looked over at Jody, who was still sitting there stunned into silence, and said:
“Jody! You gotta see this! It’s beautiful!”
She just stared at me like I was a complete lunatic.
Which, to be fair, she was probably right.
But somewhere in that moment, soaked to the bone and grinning like fools while the Pacific tried to kill us, I came up with a saying I’ve carried ever since:
“Attitude is the difference between an ordeal and an adventure.”
And without missing a beat, Jody came up with the far wiser reply:
“Sometimes it’s just an ordeal.”
