Ocean of Insight is a book in the works, a climate change memoir of my time living with the wilderness. I offer this excerpt for your comment in the spirit of crowd-sourcing its development. Cheers–H

December 31, 2008–Tilloo Cay, Bahamas

The sun is setting as the storm builds, the sailboat and impotent anchor slide backward toward the jagged shore, and Dave and I figure out the engine is disabled. I brought our forty-five foot sloop to this anchorage because I wanted to catch lobster from the reef for tonight’s New Years’ Eve dinner. But this is a place of peril in a storm–especially with a broken throttle cable. We are too exposed for being lame.

I do my best to stay calm and think clearly to minimize the damage of inexperience. Numbed by fear, I feel thick limbed and slow-witted. I am normally a strong, forty-nine-year-old woman with a level head and reliably good judgment. I am a clever, quick-learner. Yet, I am also at risk of too much optimism and this is likely the root of our current dilemma. Truth told, I don’t know much about weather forecasting and my interpretation of the timing today’s storm was probably clouded by wishful thinking. What’s worse is I know even less about repairing busted equipment. For the past twenty years I devoted myself to natural resource conservation and finding ways to counteract the mindless greed of a technological super power for the benefit of humanity’s continuation while nurturing a pair of children into resilient adults.

Normally when we come into a harbor under power, the person at the helm pushes the throttle forward, turns the vessel into the wind and then slows the boat so the other can lower ground tackle from the bow. The wind gently floats us in reverse as the forward mate releases seventy-five to one-hundred feet of chain for a long, flat pull on anchor blades. It is a beautiful feeling: the abrupt tug of the boat as it catches firm, the security of sudden rootedness in the midst of constantly flowing sea and air.

But this time, I figure, the anchor dragged across an unusually hard bottom and failed to catch. When I rotated the throttle from neutral to full in an effort to retrieve the anchor and gain more distance from land, the engine pitch remained spooky-flat. The sixty-three horse power diesel machine inexplicably ignored its controls. Dave immediately dropped a second anchor from the prow to keep from losing more ground, but now it too slides across bottom with each surge of foul sea. I know this because the sound of waves colliding into earth is closer in my ear, the gap is closing. Wedged between the force of wind and a wall of land feels like I’m in a cavernous room where walls creep eerily together to crush inhabitants.

This is an emergency. I cannot drive out of this spot without an engine. Shallow waters frame the exit so it is impossible to sail away. The only thing I know to do in an emergency is call for help. The Bahamian Air and Sea Rescue Association–BASRA–aids distressed seamen. Sea-hearty volunteers dotting the islands stand by to protect human life and property, and they act more than five-hundred times a year. Dave agrees, we are a distressed vessel. We will connect with these good people because someone–we are sure–is ready to give us a tow from this menacing shore.