listing to starboard

I like to plant prose bombs in my essays. I call them Hamas Easter eggs.

Take this one. "The weather was perfect -- especially after a stormy day at sea where a microburst of wind tipped our ship far enough to baptize two decks of portholes.  " It appeared in Sunday's essay: a brisbane too far.

I thought someone would ask about it. Not even the anti-cruising troll responded. Maybe everyone could hear the timer ticking.

It was one of the more interesting experiences I have had in 43 years of cruising.

The four of us were sitting in the Star lounge -- the venue for our favorite cruise pastime: progressive trivia. We had just begun the first round. Our host Angelina was reading the fourth question of the day. "What is a female ferret called?" (The answer is "jill.' A male ferret is a "hob." We answered incorrectly.)

Sophie, Nancy, Roy and I started unpacking the boxes stored in the far recesses of our memories. None of us had any idea. We were about to desperately settle on submitting "vixen" on our answer sheet when the ship began to roll.

We had been sailing through a mild rain shower. The seas were slightly choppy, but there had not been much wind.

None of us thought anything of the roll. We had all been through hurricane-force winds on prior cruises. Ships roll and correct. Yaw and correct. Pitch and correct.

But this roll was different. It did not correct.

Whatever had happened, something was forcing the ship to stay in a roll to starboard. The angle was severe enough that glasses started falling off tables. The shelf behind the bar disgorged its liquor and glasses onto the deck in a shower of glass shards.

For a moment, I wondered if we had stumbled onto a Irwin Allen sound set. I swear I saw Ernest Borgnine leading Stella Stevens and Red Buttons down the hallway.

I do not know how long we stayed in that position. It felt like minutes, but it was most likely only seconds. The roll felt as if it had transformed itself into a list. We were impersonating Graf Spee in Montevideo harbor.

We later discovered the list was so pronounced that the portholes on the starboard side of the ship were submerged. And the liquor and other liquids in the ship shop looked as if Carrie Nation and her hatchet had stopped by for a reforming moment.

Roy and I speculated on the loss of a stabilizer. We were wrong. Mother nature was the culprit. To be exact, we had been hit by a microburst.

The term was new to me. Or, unlike "jill," I may have heard it before and simply forgot it.

But I am very aware of one of its effects -- wind shear. When the Air Force spent taxpayer money to teach me to fly in Laredo, wind shear had become an aviation topic of interest.

The phenomenon had existed as long as there was weather. But, as aircraft proliferated in areas with weather that created shears, more aircraft were crashing. Most often during takeoffs and landings when wind shifts can defeat the physics of flight.

Microbursts often cause wind shears. The bursts come in two varieties wet (with rain) and dry (without). But both are sudden small-scale downdrafts of intense wind.

In our case, it was a dry microburst. When the downdraft hit the surface of the ocean, the wind rushed across the surface of the ocean. When it hit our ship, the ship listed. And it remained listing until the force of the wind died down.

I have not talked to any of the ship's officers about the incident, so I do not know if the ship could sustain structural damage by being forced into the position we were in. I suspect not.

I am quite certain there was no danger that we would be capsized into performing a Poseidon dead-bug. I have seen videos of huge waves hitting what appear to be top-heavy cruise ships, and they have weathered storms easily. There is enough weight in the lower portions of the ship (hull, engines, fluid tanks) that the odds of flipping over like a Pirates of the Caribbean ship are almost nil.

But those are facts and logic. And they are not always the prime calculation of the mind when faced with what appears to be danger. If we were solely a logical species, we would have gone extinct on the savannas of Africa.

Fortunately, we didn't. If we had, I would not be experiencing these sea days with my friends.

One of my more waggish friends sent me an email contending I was just faking having fun. He characterized my description of the trip as "nothing better than being stuck in the Atalanta airport for 15 days."

And to that I say -- not true. After all, we have trivia to play and dinners to dress up for as if we were Jack Dawson. The Atlanta airport does not have that.

Though, maybe that is why I am now telling you about the microburst instead of the interesting sights I saw today in Australia.