Thursday, January 20, 2011

Nature

Battle in the Atlantic

It was a day just like any other within my apartment when my alarm clock rang to wake me for work. I sat at my kitchen table eating a bowl of cereal while I watched the rain pour so hard that my hometown roads began to become invisible under the puddles of water. I could hear the wind howling in anger and it no longer seemed like any other day.

The honk came as my ride had arrived to pick me up and car pool to work. As I walked down the front stairs and proceded towards the car I could feel myself becoming quickly drenched by the rain drops that seemed like they were shooting from the sky straight at me.
"Looks like we are going to have fun today!" I said to my uncle
"Yeah, I doubt we will be out very long." He replied
I wasn't much of a talker on the ride to work. I usually fell to sleep for the hour ride there. Still with the rain hitting the windshield louder than ever and the wind whistling like crazy it was very difficult to fall asleep.

As we reached the work site we noticed everybody running to the dock very quickly in apparent desperation. Not even thinking about what could have been wrong my uncle and I quickly jumped out of the car, put our wet suits on, and ran toward the pier.
"The Kendall Brooke has sank!" Everyone was shouting.
The Kendall Brooke belonged to the crew that worked at the site right next to ours. As many men rushed to the safety of the boat it would be too late before they finally reached the Kendall Brooke. I stood and watched as my head boss stamped by me muttering a hundred curse words a minute with several men from the crew owning the boat following.

"Okay there's nothing to see here. Get ready to load up the Atlantic and check out the sites before the storm gets worse." Said my manager
So we all continued about our buisiness and readied the Atlantic, which was the biggest boat in the harbor, to go out and check the sites before calling it a day. The closer we got to setting out on the Atlantic the worse the storm got. When we were finally all ready to set out to check out sites the wake from the open water was looking very dangerous, but it had to be done. NO MATTER WHAT.

As we passed through the harbor barriers and hit the open water the boat began to rock and drift all over the place. The waves rising up to 10-13 feet with the 50-60 MPH winds hitting us every second. Still miles between us and our several destinations the tension in the air could be seen as clear as the thousand rain drops falling every second. When we finally reached the first site and checked it out a loud message began broadcasting over the radio of the Atlantic. The head manager was screaming for us to hurry back to the harbor for the storm was getting too intense.

We hurried to begin out journey back to shore when a wave bigger than anything I have ever seen came into view heading straight for us. The captain of the Atlantic did what anybody would have done and began heading straight at the huge wave to help brace some of the impact. As the wave came crashing into us everybody held on to the railings of the boat as hard as the possibly could. As the wave passed a new sound other then the loud whistling of the wind began to fill the air. The screaming of a grown man for help. It was near impossible to hear where exactly it was coming from until another co-worker discovered the man hanging off the edge of the boat screaming for his life. As we arrived back to the harbor with alot more than just the storm on our minds. We had nearly lost a fellow co-worker and friend to the Atlantic Ocean that day, but in the end of the battle between the the Atlantic and the Atlantic. A bunch of grown men who stuck together came out the victors of the battle!

7 comments:

  1. Let me get one thing straight in my mind before I comment generally: "As many men rushed to the safety of the boat it would be too late before they finally reached the Kendall Brooke."

    Because I don't understand this, I get stuck. Did the Kendall Brook sink at the pier in its berth at its mooring or at sea? I'm assuming the pier, but I can't tell for sure.

    Answer me that and then I can go on!

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  2. I like the long wind-up, starting even before the 'beginning.' Those first two grafs are just right, a fine set-up, though they are just everyday stuff. And that's the point: what starts as everyday ends somewhere else some days.

    I think you miss a bet with graf 3 about the Kendall Brook--you tell me it was horrible, but all we see in the graf is people stomping around cursing. "Horrible" could have used a little more--people's jobs disappeared, something you depend on suddenly gone, fear of what nature can do, people's helplessness, all the work raising her would mean--we would have needed something along those lines for this graf to have worked.

    The last two grafs: there's your nature description. And you do a nice thing putting man into nature, not just giving us the storm but the power and danger of it shown by the man nearly swept overboard.

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  4. Oh no no. No rewrite needed. I will always use the word 'rewrite' in my comments if I want one. No rewrite here because except for one hiccup, it worked quite well. I don't make people rewrite for hiccups and I'm not a teacher who looks for or expects perfectiion.

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