the doldrums
I remember one time on a ship, 6 days out to sea, going from Honolulu to Melbourne when we hit the doldrums. The old sailors were helpless and still in the windless ocean, the water calm as a mountain lake. I watched Lord Howe Island in the distance, a towering mountain in the middle of the Pacific. Some bold remnant of an ancient volcano, or the spawn of an other worldly collision between tectonic plates. But the engines rumbled and we made our way.
I could see the squall in the distance. When we sailed into the new angry air the sea boiled up around us, the silence broken by a crack loud as thunder,then the wild howling of the wind. I stood at the rail in awe, drenched by the horizontal rain.