I couldn’t have imagined it a year earlier, but here I was, at the front of the Elissa on bow watch with a shipmate, attached by a harness, after dark, clinging to a railing as the ship seesawed on double-decker-bus-sized swells, larger than I imagined they’d be in the Gulf.

An ocean, sure, I imagined that would be scary. But, a wee gulf?

Maybe 20, 30 feet high, I’m not sure, but the swells seemed big, and I felt like I was on a rollercoaster.

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