The worst fear of a sailor who goes offshore is the fear of going overboard. You lose your grip on the boat and on life itself at the same terrible moment. It begins with the terrible shock of that cold water closing over your head. And then the struggle to the surface just in time to see the transom of your boat passing you by and slipping slowly and inexorably out of your reach. I often dream about these terrible moments now. In my dreams, I always go overboard at night. I can see the stern light of a boat shining brightly, high above my head as I regain the surface. Shining brightly for a brief moment, a beacon of safety and hope in the dark, but then, I lose sight of it as I go down into the trough of a wave. Then, there it is again, as I am helplessly carried to the next crest, but smaller now and less bright. In my dream, I can’t cry out for some reason. I can only watch as the stern light grows smaller and dimmer, and the intervals of obscurity become longer and longer. Then it is gone, and I am truly alone in the water, drifting. At the top of each crest, I am battered by the spray that the wind is literally ripping off the top of each wave. In the troughs, I can hear the wind screaming eerily high above my head, while I am enveloped by the calm created by the shelter of the wave that is about to lift me again to the maelstrom of the next crest.

I often wonder if my dream resembles how it really was for Norman Hawkins. I wonder if he cried out. I expect not. He knew there would be no point to it. I later learned a great deal about how it was for Norman on the night he went overboard. I learned a lot of the facts, and my speculations filled in the gaps of people’s remembrances. Remembrances that were, of course, colored by the need that everyone has to rationalize their own actions and, for several, the need to lie outright about what happened that night. Finally, there is my imagination that now fills in the ultimate gaps of what Norman was thinking and feeling as he floated alone in the sea that night.

Norman Hawkins was a man whom I knew only slightly. I had never really talked to him until the afternoon of the day that he set out on his last sea voyage. We might have been friends, but there wasn’t time enough for that. We had our fateful conversation, and then he was gone. I wonder if he had a premonition of his fate. I imagine him at the wheel of that magnificent boat of his, driving it south into the confused seas of a near gale, with the wind driving the spray over the bow and back into his face. I can feel his satisfaction at controlling the power of a sixty-foot sloop on a reach driving through the waves. In the dark, when the eyes are useless, the feel of the boat is transmitted from the straining sails to the driving hull and rudder right up through the wheel and into your very hands. It can make you feel that you and the boat are the same being. For Norman, it must have seemed that way, with his son finally safe and his plans to regain control of his company finally coming together. He must have thought he had finally gotten ahead of the curve, but it was only an illusion.

It would have started with the shock of the mast going over the side followed by the gut-wrenching labor of freeing the debris to save the boat as she lay helplessly, wallowing in the threatening rollers. Then his relief at the unexpected rescue followed swiftly by betrayal. I never found out exactly how he went into the water. Was it an unexpected push? Did they throw him in bodily? Did he plead for his life? I don’t know. And I never dream about that part of it. I dream about the sudden shock as the water closes over his head. He tries to breathe but inhales only bitter salt water. As he surfaces, his only universe is the water around him and that white, bright stern light. A light that might signify rescue, but he knows not for him. So he doesn’t cry out, there is no point to it. He just watches the light grow slowly smaller until it is gone, and then he is left in the darkness to make his peace with himself and maybe his God. He couldn’t have lasted very long in that cold water, five minutes or maybe ten, struggling to stay afloat and getting weaker and weaker. Moments before, he had been on top of the world and back in control of his own destiny. But now he is getting tired. His arms are like leaden things. The water is slopping into his mouth as he tries to draw a breath. And finally, he just lets go. He lets himself go into the blackness that awaits him. But I don’t know any of this for sure. I cannot follow him down into death even in my imagination or my dreams.