Useless and Thrilled: Three Days Out of Savannah

We cast off on Friday on the tide, which is a phrase I had written in my notebook two months ago and now refuse to use again because it makes me sound like a man who owns a yacht. I do not own a yacht. I own a duffel and a MacBook and a growing suspicion that I have made a terrible mistake in the best possible way.

The horn sounded at some hour I will not pretend to remember. I was on the bridge because Priya had told me, without exactly inviting me, that passengers sometimes watched from there. The gap between the ship and the dock widened. Not quickly. Not dramatically. The way a small town disappears in a rearview mirror, which is to say: suddenly, once you look away.

The smell

I had expected salt. I had expected diesel. I had not expected the third thing, which I still cannot identify and which Marco, when asked, described as "the ship." It is not a bad smell. It is a complicated smell. Hot metal, old paint, cooking oil from the galley, rope, something faintly electrical, and underneath it all the sea doing its best to keep everything honest. I stood at the rail for an hour on Friday evening and breathed it in like a tourist.

The guilt

This is the part no one warned me about.

There are twenty three people on this vessel whose jobs involve making it go, keeping it safe, feeding it, maintaining it, navigating it, and loading or unloading it at intervals I do not control. I am not one of them. My job, as far as I can tell, is to stay out of the way, show up at meals on time, and not touch the buttons.

I have never been so aware of my own uselessness. I watched Marco change linens in a corridor I was not supposed to be in and pretended to be very interested in a fire extinguisher. I passed Elena hauling a sack of onions down a companionway and offered to help, which she declined with a look that suggested I had misunderstood the nature of the offer. I saw Priya on the bridge at 03:00, because of course she was, and I retreated before she could ask why I was awake.

The work goes on around the clock. The ship does not stop. I, however, have stopped. I have a cabin, a desk, a porthole, and a schedule that consists almost entirely of meals.

What I am doing instead

Reading the book I have been lying about since 2019. Walking the deck until I find a spot where I am not in anyone's path. Writing this. Trying to look purposeful when crew members pass, which is approximately every ninety seconds.

I am, I realize, a passenger in the oldest sense of the word. Someone carried. Someone unnecessary to the operation. The romance of this wore off around hour six and has since been replaced by something more interesting: the obligation to be worth the trouble.

Tonight

The Atlantic is dark and the ship is low and steady underfoot. Somewhere forward, a crane is being secured for weather we are apparently going to meet. I offered to help. I was told, kindly, to write something down.

I am writing it down.