You know, when you look back on it, that’s an enviously pretty view.
Miami from sea.
The phones had just died and we stood there on the deck talking in a small group and wondered how far away we were, how the distance and your perspective is skewed because your mind and your eyes are so limited. That’s just right over there. Look, you can see the buildings!
Trouble is, you can see so many buildings. So many small buildings.
But, you know, if you dropped into the water, here, this is a traffic lane. And at least seeing the shore and all of those distant buildings would give a boost to your morale. Better than being surrounded by empty horizon.
You think of that story of the football player who swam nine miles to shore, because he had an indomitable will.
I tried to tell, and told it so poorly that I just stopped, the tale of John Aldridge, the 45 year old crabber who fell off his boat off Long Island. He could really only remember the boots and the buoy, but the details woven into this january 2014 story remains impressive.
The news about Aldridge was also spreading through Montauk’s fishing community. Much of the town’s commercial fleet was out on the water that morning. Some fishermen heard Sosinski’s anguished first call for help. Others heard Sean Davis’s pan-pan broadcast. And then word traveled from boat to boat, back to the dock and then all over Montauk. The mood in town was grim. Everyone knew the odds: a man overboard, that far off the coast, would very likely never be found alive.
He was in the Atlantic for 12 hours before they found him. Said he’d spent his career conditioning himself for that moment. Surely, though, it wouldn’t take you 12 hours from that shot above to the coast. No way. And this picture is from Miami, not the north Atlantic.
I got the boots part of the story wrong in my telling of Aldridge’s story. (It has been a year since I read it.) But they were important, and I did remember that part.
Hey, it’s Friday.
