Synopsis "Floaters (in English)"
On a peaceful evening reading on my recliner in our cabin in the woods, I came across this story. I had to share it. 'Sailing across the Pacific in our thirty-six foot sailboat is a voyage of a lifetime. The leg from Hawaii to Fiji crosses the equator. The trade winds find us in the doldrums, an area where the winds change from westerly to easterly. In the interim of that change are the days of very slow progress by sail. On one of those days, Bill, watching the horizon ahead comments, "Darla, come over here and take a look. What is that shape across the bow?" "I don't have a clue Bill. Let's see." Tacking in that direction, the anomaly, more distinct now, becomes clear. "It's one of those containers. You know, one of those big boxes we see on the trains moving along the interstate." On closer observation, we see a dark area, a shadow underneath where the lack of sunlight creates an underwater oasis. Full of fish, large and small, we sit and wonder. Red in color, the container, now part of the aquatic environment has become home to literally thousands of species using the shade as an umbrella. Why doesn't it sink? How long has it been here in the water? What's inside? I swim over to it and attach a line. I can walk around on it's roof. Darla comes over. We watch the multi-colored menagerie swimming below us. "There's probably a ton of valuable stuff inside. No way to open it or it would surely sink to the bottom," she says. As the sun sets we unlink our boat and return to our floating island, slowing drifting away as we speculate what other mysteries we will encounter. I put aside the magazine and summarize the article for Sindy. "How about that as a vacation?" I ask as she stirs the fire in our own retreat high in the White Mountains of Arizona. "That sounds beautiful Bo," she pauses, "I'd rather pass on the ocean though. Where would we go for dinner out there?" she says with a smirk. Our own adventure comes along a few weeks later. After all, we are Corey and Sindala Boland, Private Investigators. The ocean gets its turn.
