It was obviously going to be a nice easy trouble-free berthing in a familiar port. Not even tricky parallel parking, just straight in.

The routine lookout hanging out over the bows chanted his usual report. We did listen, but knew there’d be no problem.

“Twenty feet to go”

“Ten feet”.

“Five feet”.

“Two”.

“One ”

“CONTACT” 

CRUNCH

Well we had to go on, our passengers needed the next port, and probably most of them had no idea.

But it was a wild storm we had to go through. And travelling in a ship in that delicate condition was scary. I was quite nervous.

A hard first lesson in the power of the sea - and not the last ...