One moment we were happy about the blue sky and the sun and the next moment it is getting too warm. Yes, too warm. Because out here on the high seas, there is nothing to protect us from the sun. No tree, no house, simply nothing except the reflecting and mirroring sea water.

But the unbelievable heat that accumulated especially in the yacht and made it unbearable there, should be our smallest problem. We had completely different worries at the moment.

For example, we were running out of supplies. There was also something wrong with our power supply, as we kept having power outages. And unfortunately, neither Yibo nor I understand any of this. In addition, the seawater desalination plant on the yacht keeps breaking down. It is supposed to convert seawater into drinking water for us. But again and again the device fails.

We couldn't start the engine because the tank on our yacht was empty. I know that Haikuan told Meng Yao during our last shore leave to fill the tank and all the canisters. But none of us had checked to see if he had really done it. And since the empty canisters were still there, we know that they didn't take the fuel on with them. And probably that's more the reason why they just left. They knew we wouldn't get out of there!

There would have to be a strong storm for our sails to take us away from our anchorage. We managed to get the anchor up, but since it has been windless for days, we barely moved.

Well and then there was this huge cruise ship that either no one lives on anymore or they ran out of fuel like we did. Either way, it was slowly but surely getting closer and closer to our position. With each day it got a little closer to us. If the cruise ship kept on coming towards our position and eventually caught up with us, it would flatten our sailing yacht, that much was clear.

So we frantically searched for a solution to all our problems. Yibo even used nautical charts to find a nearby island or mainland. He thought we could take the lifeboat and then with the paddles we would row to the nearest land mass. According to his calculations, it would take us about a day and a half. The problem was, such lifeboats are only designed for a short period of use.

Through a non-fiction book we read about sailing and boats, we learned that it is even safer to stay on a sinking ship than to rely on a lifeboat. But we knew that if we couldn't think of anything else, we would have to take the lifeboat. And that's before the cruise ship reaches us!

With anxious eyes, we kept an eye on the cruise ship, wondering how they could be making progress while we didn't seem to be moving at all. If we were moving, we should have always been about the same distance from the cruise ship. But that's not how it was.

To cool off we went into the ocean instead of the shower and that's when something caught Yibo's eye as he dove near our yacht. I had swum about 50 meters away from the yacht when he called me back and wanted to show me something. I swam back and dove together with him, where I saw the problem of why we couldn't move.

We were stuck! A rope that must have come from a shipwreck had gotten caught in our propeller. I don't know how that happened and was even possible. But the rope was taut and held us in place. Yibo got a knife and cut it. After that, we could only hope that we would slowly move away from our collision course with the cruise ship.

And the latter actually happened that same night. That evening, Yibo and I were sitting out on the deck eating a bowl of rice with canned vegetables when we saw a few small clouds in the sky. We were just hoping that it would be a little windy. But just half an hour after we saw the first really small clouds, a storm broke over us.

Flood-like rain poured down from the sky, it stormed so much that we had meter-high waves and our yacht was rocked back and forth. Again and again it lowered to the right and threatened to tip over. Thunder and lightning crashed over us. And suddenly the cruise ship was very close to us and the wind carried a horrible stench from it to us.

The wind was so loud that we could only communicate by screaming. Waves were crashing down on the yacht, flooding our yacht, and finally Yibo came running to me, gave me a life jacket, put one on himself, and yelled, "We have to get down from here! We're sinking! And the ship is getting closer!"

We ran inside again, fought our way through the knee-high water, got our stuff and the rest of the supplies, then Yibo threw the lifeboat down, it popped up when it landed on the water and we jumped off the yacht and swam to the lifeboat. Again and again the waves swept us underwater, driving us away from our lifeboat and back to the yacht.

Eventually we made it into the lifeboat, completely exhausted Yibo started the small boat engine, for which we fortunately still had some gasoline. We moved away from the yacht very slowly, could hardly see anything because of the rain and the waves. But after about half an hour we saw the cruise ship and the yacht having a duel, which the yacht lost and sank rapidly.

As fast as the storm had started, it was gone. After only an hour, it was as if nothing had happened. We were soaked, cold and exhausted. The small engine took us farther and farther away from the cruise ship and the stench of death that came from it. And when the gasoline ran out, we lay against each other in the lifeboat, warmed each other and fell asleep.

In the morning, the sky above us was blue again and the sun was hot. We had survived the storm and the night and lost our yacht. Everything we now owned was in two large bags and two large backpacks. Fortunately, one of the backpacks was packed with water bottles and energy bars, which I hid there when I saw that Meng Yao kept helping himself to them.

In the two big bags are our clothes and our documents. These are bags that you could dive with without getting anything wet in them. How good that Yibo had found them on the yacht and stuffed them with our belongings, just in case of emergency. And we had our weapons. Yibo his axe and a harpoon and I my silver spear.

What we didn't have was, for example, a nautical chart and a compass. We had no idea where we were. The storm drove us in some direction, which one it was, we didn't know and we had no influence on it anyway. And unfortunately everything looks the same on the sea. The only thing we could orient ourselves by was the sun, where it rose and where it set. But that was all we had.

So we knew, in the east the sun rises, in the south it rises high and in the west it sets. You can't see it in the north, of course. And Yibo thought he remembered that the next island was in the south. So we waited until the sun rose and rowed away. And we rowed and rowed, but it stayed that way, blue sky, hot sun and water. The view remained the same until night fell.

The next morning we started rowing again, not knowing if we had drifted from our course during the night. Because we were so exhausted from all the rowing that we slept soundly.

Every muscle was aching and we had also gotten a bad sunburn. The rowing was very difficult and cost us all our strength. By lunchtime we were so exhausted that we could hardly move. Finally we took some of our clothes, put ourselves in the lifeboat and covered our bodies with the clothes to protect us from the sun. And we stayed there until the sun went down.

We rowed on in the night, not really knowing where to go and just hoping for a bit of luck. We were already very lucky, because our lifeboat was still holding out. But, how much longer?

In the morning we were so tired that we just wanted to sleep. But we knew we couldn't afford to give up now and had to keep going. Hang in there, no matter what the cost. So we kept going and going and just before noon we saw a sailboat. At first we thought we were hallucinating, but no, the sailboat was really there!

We rowed faster and closer to the sailboat. We shouted loudly "Hello? Is anyone there?" but received no response. Eventually Yibo tied our lifeboat to the sailboat and climbed up. He took my spear with him and went to look around. After a few minutes he came back out and shrugged, "No one there." He said.

I handed Yibo all our things and then climbed onto the sailboat as well. It's only a very small sailboat and I'm sure it's only meant for one person. Besides, I don't think it was designed for long voyages on the sea. But, it is a sailboat and not a lifeboat. And we were sure that we would be able to handle it no matter what.

Yibo set sail as Haikuan had taught us and I took a closer look around the cabin. There wasn't much evidence of the owner. But there were still a few supplies, a water purifier, a small shower with a working toilet, and a small kitchen with a two plate stove and a mini fridge. Not much, but it would be enough for us.

While I cleaned up and re-covered the bed, Yibo hooked us a fish. We then cooked it in two pans and set about figuring out where we were. Radar, GPS, and compass made that pretty easy. That's how we found out that we were only a few hours away from a small island.

We headed for the island and thanks to the light wind, we made good progress. When we got there, we were disappointed because the island is so small that there is nothing there. Except a few animals that probably had never seen people before and a few trees and bushes. Nevertheless, we docked and decided to stretch our legs a bit on land, look for drinking water and maybe we could hunt down an animal.

The island was so small that Yibo and I could still see each other from our respective ends. He went hunting and I went looking for drinking water. A spring or whatever fresh water there might be. I found only a lake, which was only as small as a pond. The water was anything but clean and because we had no more purification tablets, I let it be. Yibo had more luck, he found wild chickens and caught two of us. He killed them like a pro!

Actually we would like to do without killing animals. But we have to survive and keep our strength up. So we have no other choice.

We made a fire on the island and grilled the two chickens there. They were only very small. We each had one and filled our stomachs. Then we washed our dirty clothes by having water and washing powder in a bowl and then washing the clothes in it. We stretched a line from one tree to the next and hung our clothes on it, since we had decided to spend a night on the island.

We used the time we spent on the island to clean out the sailboat. We threw out everything we didn't need or that belonged to the former owner, creating a little more space in the small cabin. We patched one of the sails that had a tear in it. We set the radio to the emergency frequency, went through a checklist of the technical instruments on board our sailboat and finally we set up camp on the island where we spent the night.

The next morning the laundry was dried and it was time to get back on the sea. But before that Yibo caught some chickens, which now live with us on the sailboat. At least until we will prepare them for lunch. Our next destination is a larger island where we hope to restock our supplies. We have regained control and hopefully we will keep it.