Traces of Loneliness in the Middle of the Sea
The middle of the ocean is a place that swallows sound and time. Days merge, hours lose their edges, and there’s nothing but sea in every direction — horizon to horizon, water and sky. And amid this endless expanse, loneliness takes on a form that is hard to describe, but impossible to ignore.
On KRITI RUBY, the signs are everywhere if you know how to look.
It’s in the way the bosun lingers by the railing a little longer than necessary, staring at the waves even when the deck is clear. In the way the cook hums an old song, maybe one that reminds him of home, while preparing a meal for a crew that often eats in silence. In the empty laughter that echoes too loudly in the messroom after a joke that isn’t really that funny.
I started to notice these things in my second week aboard KRITI RUBY. At first, I thought loneliness was something internal, something private — a feeling that each sailor carried quietly in his or her heart. But then I realized: loneliness lives on this ship. It inhabits the steel corridors and echoes off the bulkheads. It settles in the spaces between conversations, in the pauses between tasks.
It was during one particular watch, the third night in a row with perfect weather — calm seas, clear sky, full moon — that I felt it most acutely. I stood on the starboard side of the bridge, looking out at the moon’s silver path stretching across the water. Everything was peaceful, almost beautiful. And yet I felt an ache I couldn’t name.
What was I missing? I wasn’t physically alone — there was another officer nearby, the lookout on deck below, engineers moving through the engine room. Yet this ache persisted.
I thought of home: friends gathered in cafés, the simple act of choosing what to cook for dinner, voices overlapping, faces familiar. None of that existed out here. The crew of KRITI RUBY had become my substitute family, and yet we were all strangers in a way — bound by circumstance, schedule, and sea.
And this is the paradox of life at sea: you are rarely physically alone, but emotional loneliness can strike at any moment. Surrounded by people, you sometimes feel utterly isolated.
I decided to speak about this feeling with one of the more experienced sailors, an older able seaman with deep lines etched into his weathered face. Over a late-night coffee in the messroom, I asked him: “How do you deal with the loneliness out here?”
He didn’t answer right away. He took a sip of coffee, placed the mug down carefully, and finally said: “You don’t fight it. You make peace with it.”
I must have looked puzzled because he continued. “Loneliness is part of the deal. The sea is too big, the distances too vast, the days too long for it not to creep in. You can’t chase it away. You just… let it sit beside you for a while. Then you keep working.”
His words were honest, stripped of romanticism. And yet there was something comforting in their simplicity. He spoke as someone who had learned, over decades at sea, that loneliness wasn’t a weakness or failure — it was simply a fact.
I began to see the crew differently after that conversation. Each person was carrying their own form of loneliness, but all of us were coping in small, personal ways. The third engineer always polished his tools longer than necessary. The chief mate maintained an obsessive precision in his paperwork. The cook baked bread from scratch even though we had pre-packaged loaves in the freezer.
Rituals, habits, small acts of care — these were our defenses against the silence of the sea.
Even KRITI RUBY herself seemed to offer comfort. The hum of her engines, the rhythmic vibration of her deck plates, the steady progress of her bow cutting through the waves — all of it provided a sense of purpose, a feeling that we were part of something larger than ourselves. The ship became both our prison and our companion.
And yet, in this strange environment, loneliness could also be beautiful. It stripped away distractions and left you face to face with yourself. In the middle of the sea, beneath stars untouched by city lights, you were forced to reflect on who you were, what you valued, what you longed for.
It was on KRITI RUBY that I began to appreciate the paradox of loneliness: it hurts, yes, but it also clarifies. It shows you what matters by showing you what’s missing.
By the end of that watch, I no longer saw my loneliness as a threat. I saw it as part of the landscape — like the ocean itself: vast, inevitable, sometimes terrifying, but always honest.
And when I walked below deck and lay in my bunk that night, I smiled. I was not alone in my loneliness. We all carried it together, quietly, respectfully — each of us adding to the invisible cargo that KRITI RUBY carried across endless seas.