The Light in the Storm

By Nikki Lynn Ragsdale

Nikki, Eileen, and Darrell board the ferry Stena Normandica, going to Ireland for Christmas 1981. But the crossing transforms into an adventure they’ll be lucky to survive—linking them forever to the Penlee lifeboat disaster.

What does the foregoing have to do with Hurricane Alicia, a storm that struck Texas in 1983? Is there a deeper context for our lives than we usually realize?

These are stormy times of great shifts and spiritual growth. How do we adroitly navigate them?

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Mar 23, 2014
• ISBN: 9781483523033

Book preview

Ireland

FOREWORD

Early in my times at sea a young lady friend sent a card containing this saying to me: I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul (from the poem Invictus, by William Ernest Henley). Since then, I’ve taken this saying deeply to heart.

I have experienced the actions of several captains in ocean storms, as well as my own and my shipmates’, and all of us depending on the ships’ structure. We all wanted the storm (our problem) to go away. Would we survive? Ultimately it lay in the captain’s ability to use the resources available. Youth marvels at such decisions and strengths as one sees in good captains. Such captains’ modesty may have led them to marvel at themselves, as they prayed in silent thanks for safe returns. The crew would remember who and what brought them through, and carry these lessons through life, drawing on them when circumstances called out.

Nikki Ragsdale’s account of the storm of December 19, 1981, gives me flashbacks to the storms I experienced during my four years of active duty in the US Coast Guard as Quartermaster in North Atlantic voyages, including six ocean stations near Greenland and Labrador. I could feel the Stena Normandica heaving through the huge seas and see the passengers on the deck, the story moving me along with them and lighting up my own memories of similar situations. Hers is the language of a passenger rather than of a sailor using nautical terms, yet her writing vividly recreates the colorful scenes and the nautical surroundings.

All the mariners aboard the Penlee lifeboat RNLB Solomon Browne, the fourteen-hundred-gross-ton cargo vessel Union Star, the rescue tug Noord Holland, the helicopter Rescue 8-0, and the sixteen-hundred-passenger ferry Stena Normandica acted upon their best experience on common waters sent raging by uncommon forces that night in December 1981. Sixteen paid the ultimate price— may they rest in peace, amen.

At the close of the BBC documentary Cruel Sea: The Penlee Lifeboat Disaster, we’re told that thirty to forty fishermen are lost around the coasts of the UK every year, a heartbreaking statistic. This storm left even deeper wounds to heal. Today we may call such wounds post-traumatic stress disorder and treat them with modern medicine—but medicine is rooted in generations of healing by spirituality, psychology, religion, and herbs. Following the account of Nikki’s actions as a passenger aboard the ferry during the storm that evening, and alone through Hurricane Alicia in Houston eighteen months later, she shares values and experiences that assisted her through these and other intense circumstances in her life and helped her heal.

As I read these experiences, a particular sentence speaks especially to me: The clearest thinking happens best in the peaceful presence of a quiet mind. And I recall the times my mind has been most quiet: after storms at sea; while undergoing two medically supervised ten-day water fasts; and during acupuncture treatments over a period of some three months. Daily physical exercise helps sustain this state for me. My benchmark for a quiet mind has been set, and I realize that I’m able to feel best about making decisions whenever my mind can approach this level of quietude.

May the reader also find inspiration in the pages of this book.

Denis D. Howard

Master 1600 Gross Tons Oceans

2nd Mate Unlimited Gross Tons Oceans

US Coast Guard Issue

The following map and photograph will give readers not familiar with the area a clearer sense of where the stories in Chapters One and Two take place, and a better idea of Fishguard Harbour and the ferry Stena Normandica.

MV Stena Normandica sails along the breakwater on a beautiful day, heading toward her berth at the train station and ferry terminal on Fishguard Harbour. The old fishing harbor and marina of Fishguard’s Lower Town can be seen in the foreground. Circa 1979.

CHAPTER ONE

An Unexpected

Adventure

I reach into my knapsack for the candle I’d packed on a whim. Eileen and I agree that if ever there was a right time for this candle, it’s now. I’m on my first trip to Ireland, a spur-of-the-moment trip. While getting my things ready to go, I’d felt an urge to take the candle with me. Pack it, said Eileen. You never know. . . .

It’s Saturday, December 19, 1981. We rose early in the morning to catch a train at Paddington station in London, heading for Fishguard, Wales. Now we’re on a ferry that sails from there to Rosslare, Ireland, to complete the journey. It’s crowded. Mostly, they’re Irish people going home for Christmas, although there may also be among them a few residents of the Fishguard area out for a fun Saturday-night jaunt on the ferry, and of course a few tourists. Eileen, her six-year-old son Darrell, and I are looking forward to a lovely Christmas and New Year’s too, at the start of our three-week holiday.

The lounge where we’re sitting is a big room lined with windows, taking up the entire width of the deck at the rear of the ship. Our ferry is large and impressive, nearly four hundred feet long, with room for sixteen hundred passengers. She’s rather tall, with six decks, three of them belonging to a vehicle hold, where she carries hundreds of cars and lorries for a typical crossing. This close to Christmas, she’s bound to be full to capacity.

Over thirty years later, only portions of the ferry’s layout are still clear in my mind as I remember the day’s events, like patches of moonlight in a dark wood. However, I’ve found a 1984 deck plan online, and as I examine it I know our lounge is what the plan identifies as Summer Lounge.