With everyone on The Heap asleep one floor below me, I sat alone on the second floor protected from the forty-two degree air outside. The Heap remained level and headed the right direction roughly eighty percent of the time. Every so often, the autopilot would inexplicably fall behind and oscillate through long, slow turns. During a particularly difficult set of waves, I disengaged it and straightened The Heap out manually, waited a minute and turned the autopilot back on, grumbling that it must have been designed by Microsoft.

On any boat at any time underway at sea, your body constantly compensates for the unnatural motion, whether you're standing, sitting or even lying in bed. I hoped that working on the stories on my laptop, combined with the odd GPS interface and the dials and buttons on the radar display would keep me awake and occupied. That worked for most of my two hour stint. Twice I climbed up to the third floor and let the apparent wind, all from ahead as the true wind had died, pummel me into wakefulness. Standing and looking forward I watched the phosphorescent spray from the bow as The Heap crushed waves rather than slice through them. I was glad to be planing at fifteen knots rather than pitching and heeling and getting soaked while sitting on the rail of some racing sailboat only going nine knots. However, I was still dismayed that I was out there at all, again a victim of my curiosity. More worrisome was that I could see no method in my future to break this habit of succumbing to the lure of someone sticking something new in front of me. Ah, but I was not in a war or a hospital or in traffic leaving a sporting event or in a mosh pit or in a riot as a shooting victim and in a few days, Alia's talents willing, I would be set free again. This roundabout of thought continued, circling with no escape, too many times.

Ten minutes before the watch change at ten I climbed down to the first floor to wake Alia so she could get ready. That was a somewhat alarming exercise itself because for those ninety seconds, sixty-six thousand pounds of Heap was barreling through the ocean at night without any eyes forward.

It was a rental.