This essay is taken from Richard Flanagan’s acclaimed collection of nonfiction pieces, And What Do You Do, Mr Gable?, published in Vintage. ‘Maybe if the weather had been different we would have made it. No one had predicted anything like the force-nine gale that turned a calm ocean into a liquid earthquake.’A near-fatal kayak trip across the Bass Strait with a friend has author Richard Flanagan contemplating memory and dreams, childhood visions, and the things that really matter in life.