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From left to right: South Africa (Adeena), America (Jon), Netherlands (Luke) Czech Republic (Helena), Estonia (Tom) |
Marooned on a deserted island at sunrise, our final liters of water beguiling us. Netherlands had suffered hallucinations all night,
his feet ripped by coral, his leg swollen from an unfortunate collision with a jellyfish. Czech Republic had heat stroke.
America and Estonia weren’t in good repair either;
I struggled to perform the basic skill of
standing.
It had been pouring with rain all night and we were all exhausted…..
Only ten days earlier we’d sat staring into the islandly abyss as the sun ducked behind a distant land and we’d decided we needed a boat.
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It turns out boats are pretty expensive – who knew? And that’s
why we begged, borrowed and bought everything we needed to build one. We
figured a day or two of hard labour would have us sailing in no time, but 8
days of sweat and toil later we were finally ready.
Or at least we thought we
were.
because there’s no way to legally do this on a self-constructed raft; we
appropriately named the vessel ‘The Illegal Immigrant.’
We sailed and paddled and swam and visited beautiful islands and life was perfect! Surreally perfect! Until about 4pm that
was…
The winds picked up. Czech told us she kept hearing snapping noises –
we assured her we were fine, “perfectly perfectly fine.”
I finally reached it I realized there was no possible way I could actually
bring it back and, worse – I realized the current was dragging us into an
infinite harbour wall… the waves were crashing violently against the wall and
our little Immigrant didn’t stand a chance.
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Excitement and amazement as we reached the shore alive! |
And that wasn’t the end of it either…
the storm was closing in fast and our island held nothing but rocks and trees and
crabs and sand and so, using sticks and ropes and the remains of our sail, we
constructed a shelter and a fire and huddled together trying desperately to
warm ourselves and recuperate.
howled and the torrents poured down and lightning flashed and crabs attacked
our toes and by sunrise we were desperately plotting our escape.
the sand while Estonia and Czech tried to flag down passing fisherman and
America tried to reach civilization. But nobody paid any attention to us as we
yelled and waved and whistled and every time hope glistened, it turned and fled
in the wrong direction.
faster than we’d left it. where we all ventured off in search of new adventures
[And the hospital].
And it’s amazing how life brings you around in circles, but today, 6 months later, I’m back in Malaysian waters, building a new sort of boat… Let’s hope this time’s a little [or a lot] less shipwrecky!