On the Boat
Still in the cabin, Akram tries to manage the situation as best he can. With all the boat's controls in front of him, he starts by folding the sails and calibrating the speed. He looks at the other buttons but half of them he doesn't understand. The radar is still working, it doesn't show any obstacles, in his head everything is fine.
The hours passed and he was still in the cabin counting the waves to pass the time. He ends up falling asleep on the boat's controls.
Some time later...
The situation is calm inside the boat, Tom in the room is sleeping peacefully and comfortably in his bed, Akram still sleeping on the dashboard. The situation outside is quite different, the small waves are now more than four meters high and follow one another. The wind amplified their course and soon the boat began to suffer the consequences. Objects inside the cabin start to fall from all sides and the sleeping body soon smashes its head against a wall. Blood begins to leak from his head. On the dashboard, a lot of alerts start to appear...
[Damaged engine alert]
[Leakage detected alert]
[Sensor malfunction alert]
Several alerts continued to appear one after the other, with no one in control of the boat. The first to wake up was Tom, who after several hours was starting to feel cold in his sleep. The heating and lights turned on more. Once his eyes opened, Tom saw water coming in under the bedroom door, the lights off and the bedroom completely cold. He gets up and opens the door directly, he rushes up to the control room.
Tom :" Akram what are you doing there, the boat is sinking and there is no more heating in the room..."
Before he could even finish the sentence he saw his friend lying on the floor with a head injury.
In panic, he starts to put his unconscious friend against the wall of the boat and try to wake him up. Little by little Akram wakes up and with a weak voice he tries to speak. The control room is completely turned upside down, the windows are broken, rain is constantly coming in. At times waves hit the boat and some of them get inside. Akram regains consciousness and notices his condition, completely wet with blood flowing from his skull. He looks at the state of the room and gets up quickly enough to take the controls of the boat. Tom supports Akram and once in front of the controls they both notice that there is something wrong. The engine does not indicate any more speed as if it was stopped, alarms are activated everywhere and the radar indicates several presences around the boat. They both looked up and what they saw was a most terrifying scene. Waves of 5 to 12 meters. The boat was going in all directions without being able to maintain direction.
Soon the waves started to hit harder and harder, some of the poles that were supporting the sails start to break off or bend. Damage began to appear all over the boat, the protective barriers began to come off and the windows shattered into a thousand pieces.
The wind was so strong and cold that anyone who saw this scene would have their blood run cold with fright. The ship was going to fall and disappear into the deep abyss of the ocean.
We were panic-stricken but tried to keep our composure by giving each other instructions that seemed totally useless before the wrath of the waves. Petrified with fear, Akram clung desperately to the boat and felt so helpless in the face of this raging nature. He took the manual controls and tried to avoid as many waves as possible.
Soon, the sky became dark. The wind picked up, and the rain began to pound the surface of the ocean. I had never sailed in such chaos and noise. Powerful winds of 160 km/h and waves of 30 meters propelled our small boat. After a few hours, we lost control of our boat and it completely rolled on its side. Tom had to go out on deck to slow it down, keep it afloat and prevent us from being submerged because of the cracks in the hull. Akram piloting the boat relentlessly, going back and forth in the cold, dark night. His body was shaking, he was soaked, completely chilled.
After having given us a taste of the most brutal spectacle that lasted several hours, the ocean suddenly became peaceful. At first we thought we were out of the cyclone. But we were wrong. We were actually in the eye of the hurricane, a central area where there is no wind or precipitation. The sky was a deep blue, while all around us was a threatening black.
The second part of this ordeal seemed even more challenging than the first. We were exhausted and hungry. I was lucky: I never felt seasick. Probably because of the adrenaline. While Tom faced the storm outside, I was steering the boat.