This can’t be happening.
The boat lurched again suddenly. I looked down at the $12,000 video camera that I was holding in my hands hoping that It might give me an answer. Hoping it wasn’t real. Water continued gushing in at my feet. The boats engine suddenly made a terrifying groan and the boat made a sudden lurching movement.
I was sitting in an outrigger banca boat cruising out to sea somewhere in the Philippines, I honestly didn’t even know where I was. No one knew, except for the captain; if you could call him that.
The boat lurched again, this time it was a bigger jolt. The video camera fell out of my hands as I braced myself.
Suddenly the boat flipped. In a split second I was under water in complete darkness. Which way was up? I couldn’t tell. The only thing going through my brain was: ‘Swim! Swim hard, swim fast! Swim away from the boat or it will pull you down with it as it sinks.’ I don’t know if my eyes were open in the darkness of the water or if they were closed shielding me from the unknown.
As I started to run out of breath, I began moving in the direction that I thought was up. Fortunately, I was right. My head popped up out of the water and as I breathed in and filled my lungs with hot humid air I could see a faint haze of light above the dark water.
Yes, this was real. I was bobbing in the South Philippine sea amid a flotsam of debris in darkness.
But I was alive.