One of the unique things is that whether we were out at sea or in the middle of the water tank, a lot of times you just couldn't leave. Especially when we were out at sea.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I'm from an island, so I've always been near the water. I don't think I could live somewhere far from the sea.
There's no one here in America swimming the Pacific Ocean - or the Atlantic, or the Caribbean - to leave this place. The reason why is because of the freedom. Freedom for a man to mark out his own destiny. It's not, 'Hey, you have so much.'
The sea was at the bottom of my road, and I seemed to spend my childhood in it or on it, hearing, tasting, smelling it. Now, still, I need to be near water as often as possible.
As a child, I was aware of the widely-held attitude that the ocean is so big, so resilient that we could use the sea as the ultimate place to dispose of anything we did not want, from garbage and nuclear wastes to sludge from sewage to entire ships that had reached the end of their useful life.
My escape is to just get in a boat and disappear on the water.
But I think one of the reasons I tend to stay in the water most of the time is I distrust the comfort.
If I were dropped out of a plane into the ocean and told the nearest land was a thousand miles away, I'd still swim. And I'd despise the one who gave up.
It's a perfectly human instinct to want to be near water.
At sea, I feel comfortable and I come to rest.
If you wish to avoid foreign collision, you had better abandon the ocean.