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Tornado at Sea

by Kelli Hedding, Copyright February 3, 2008, all rights reserved. 2543 views

I’m Kelli.  A couple years after I graduated from my homeschool, I ran away to sea.  I spent time in 23 different countries while serving for 2 years on board a missionary ship.  During that time I was trained as a deck hand and became a certified AB (Able Bodied Seagirl - no, not seagull).  Later I lived in Croatia for six months doing conversion work on another missionary ship.

On a ship we run into many unexpected adventures . . .

From Misc Images

I stood staring across the ocean.  A dark form emerged from the surface.  It was moving toward our ship.  I grasped the ship’s railing nervously, not sure what the thing was.  We had already had enough excitement tonight and my mind was still reeling from being woken up suddenly from a deep sleep…

Earlier in the evening I had been in town for dinner with a group of friends.  It had been a very hot evening.  Strong winds began to sweep through the old stone fortress of Trogir as we were finishing our pizza at our favorite outdoor cafe on the waterfront.  We could see storm clouds in the distance.

Knowing that tornados were a novelty to the group I was with I decided to show off a bit.  “I miss my home in Illinois,” I had said, jokingly.  “I want a real storm…a storm that tears things apart!!”

Nobody had really paid much attention to my comment - at least not then.

We had run home from the cafe in the rain with thunder and lightning all around us.  We arrived home at the ship drenched.  None of us was really bothered by being wet; it was so hot outside that we welcomed it.

The storm had passed pretty quickly and cooled everything down.  Soon my friends and I were enjoying the last rays of sunlight on the ship’s outside decks.  I was relishing the relief from the heat of the last week as I chatted with a girl from Singapore.  I went to sleep delighted by the cool air my fan was circulating around the little cabin.

As I blissfully slept a number of my friends had been standing out on the decks watching lightning off in the distance.  It had been still.  Suddenly a strong wind hit.  The cranes in the shipyard started spinning.  Loud, sickening bangs exploded from the aft mooring station where our ship was tied to the quayside.  The sea was blown vertically up the side of the ship moored perpendicular to us.

In my cabin I awoke to an eerie silence.  My fan had stopped working.  All I could hear was wind; very strong wind.  I peeked out my window and my heart leapt into my throat.  The whole world outside seemed to be swirling around.  I heard doors slamming in the alleyway outside my cabin.

“The ship is moving all over the place!!” My friend from Spain exclaimed when she saw me.

I was trembling badly as I struggled to put my clothes on.  What was going on?  I stopped before leaving my cabin section and said a prayer, trying to calm my trembling.  I stepped outside on the deck.  It was no longer very windy. It took a few seconds for me to orientate myself.

“That tanker used to be perpendicular to us…how is it parallel now?” I thought.

It was an eerie feeling that washed over me as I realized that our 12 ton ship had come loose from the quayside and was drifting.  I was one of only four trained crew; nobody else would know what to do.  We had one officer on board; the Captain lived on shore.

“Kelli, get to the aft mooring station, we need you now,” ordered one of the other crew.

I was glad to be put into action helping to re-secure the ship.  Now here I was staring out across the ocean trying to figure out what dark form was emerging from the now calm seas.  I squinted into the dark night.  Suddenly I laughed.  It was the scaffolding that had served as an exit from our ship.  When the wind - we found out later that it was a tornado - tore our ship away from the quayside our lines had taken the scaffolding with it.  Now, tangled in the mooring line, the scaffolding was coming to the surface.

It proved a tricky task to re-secure our ship that night.  There was the challenge of the untrained crew; there was the challenge of having no captain on board; there was the challenge of securing a mooring line with scaffolding hanging off of it.  For days after the ship was moored safely back in position the scaffolding remained floating on the surface, sandwiched between the ship and the quayside.

From Misc Images

After the ship had been safely moored that night those of us who had worked to moor it gathered in the aft mooring station to pray.  I glanced around at the faces of my comrades in the dimly lit mooring station and thanked God for the opportunity to work with each of them; an adventure without people to share it with is not nearly as special.  My heart was singing praises to God for allowing me to be apart of yet another adventure at sea.

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