The Phantom Ship

Saturday, December 7, 2024

We have been going through a very dry spell on Maui. Being winter, the weather has been lovely to experience. Cool mornings, warm days, clear skies, no wind. There’s a little nip to a breeze and a reminder of the season when I step into the shade. Last night it broke.

I woke up in the early hours and through the open windows heard a sound outside that sounded vaguely familiar. Trying to figure out what it was woke me up from my sleep. I was listening to rain water catch in and trickle through the gutters.

We woke up this morning to overcast skies and a light drizzle falling. There is plenty of sun on these islands, and I for one welcome living in this corner of the island where rain falls more often than some other parts.

I got up to make tea and coffee, my wife and I have mixed morning tastes, and stared out towards the ocean. Now the sea is probably about a mile from us as the crow flies. The sky was grey and thick with clouds. The water a similar colour. Only the graininess of the cloud told the two apart. And there, barely etched out of the cloud, was the form of a cruise ship, its own colours so very similar to its backdrop that it was difficult to tell the ship apart from them. As I made our morning drinks I kept returning to this image - the cloud, the ocean, the cruise liner. For me there was something spooky about the liner’s presence. It was ghost like. Clichéd maybe, but as though it was emerging out of the mist” and seeming larger than its almost two/three mile distance from me would suggest.

It’s mid-morning now. The skies are clearing, the sea a deep blue. If the cruise ship sailed by now it would be a white ship on a blue ocean. This morning it was very different. That image is etched on my mind.