Category: Boats

The latest episode of Powerful Rings really blew me away with the power of a mountain exploding. It had awesome fight scenes, an explosive ending and some exciting character drama. I had my doubts about this show at first, but if they blow up a mountain every week and have some big battles here and there, I won’t have anything to complain about anymore.

Normally, I really enjoy a character-driven piece of media, but something about the character interactions in the first five weeks of Powerful Rings felt a bit off to me. Did we really need to see the elf character go and hang out with his dwarf friend, all as a ruse to discover whether the dwarves had found the secret power of the best boat latch in the world yet? I’m not sure what a boat catch is supposed to do to help the elves with the fact that they are slowly being drained of their power, but we’re supposed to just go along with it, I guess. I suspect that the dwarves are going to get so greedy over boat catches that they will dig too deep into the mountain to create more, eventually unleashing the power of a fiery demon. Now that’s something I want to see – not the build-up to it! Just show me the result!

I have noticed that there is a lot of boat talk in this show. If it was just for the island plot, then that would make sense, since boats are kind of their thing. If the bratty teenager wants to tank his apprenticeship making bait boards, I can totally buy that as part of this story. But when the elves are obsessed with finding these boat latches, I start to wonder if it’s all some sort of subliminal message to get me to buy snapper racks near Melbourne. Now, I wouldn’t have a huge problem with that if it were true, but call me old-fashioned if I’d rather they stick to the holy lore written by James Taken several decades ago. Oh well, as long as they keep the explosions coming, I will keep watching.

– Just another critic

I remember that my dad and I used to sail when I was little.

He died when I was really young, but that memory — being out on the water, so far we could barely see land – that memory stuck with me.

‘What can you see?’ he’d asked me once, as I hung off the front of the boat, gaping at the water.

‘Nothing?’ I’d shrugged, childishly even for a child. He’d laughed though, and locked off the sail so he could join me.

‘Nothing?!’ he repeated, with mock shock. ‘How is that possible?’

‘There’s nothing out here!’ I’d said with a smile. ‘It’s just water.’

‘Just water?’ he said, mouth agape. ‘That doesn’t seem possible. What’s that?’ he pointed at the horizon.

‘Just the sun.’

‘Just the sun?!’ he repeated. ‘Do you have any idea how cool the sun is?’

‘Almost as cool as your vinyl boat wrap design?’

‘No, kiddo,’ he shook his head. ‘Nothing is that cool.’

‘How cool then?’ I frowned. He laughed.

‘Up there,’ he said pointing at the setting sun, ‘is a massive great ball of burning gas, so hot and so huge that it’s constantly reigniting itself.’

‘Woah,’ I gasped, staring up at it.

‘Been like that for billions and billions of years,’ he said, smiling as he looked at me. ‘And it’ll keep doing it for billions and billions more.’

‘What happens after that?’ I asked, breathlessly.

‘After that?’ he said. ‘After that it goes boom – and swallows up the Earth.’

‘Woah,’ I said again, quieter this time.

‘Don’t worry about us, though,’ my dad said with a grin. ‘We’ll be long gone, on huge spaceships. They’ll probably have cool designs on the side and everything.’

‘Like the cool designs for a sailboat print?’ I asked.

‘That’s my girl,’ he laughed, ruffling my hair. ‘But no, they’ll be much cooler than that.’

‘Like what?’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I have to assume there’ll be hot-rod flames on at least one of them.’

 

The ocean celebration kicks off with great fanfare. A crowd of mermaids – thousands of them – swim into the coral fields, their tails glistening in the light from the fire globes. The sun doesn’t reach us down here, but we figured out fire before humans did and even managed to find a way to keep it permanently dry while underwater.

Many mermaids seem to have brought their own stolen vinyl boat graphics along to the celebration. Some have been vandalised, with thick slashes through the flags. Others claimed the designs as their own family crests, despite the fact that they once belonged to the fishermen who hunted us for sport. We as a species recognise that there is no right or wrong way to commemorate our lost ancestors.

As for my own family, we neither steal nor covet. In fact, we tend to avoid anything human altogether. My parents have always believed that the best way to keep safe from humans is to steer clear of anything to do with them so as not to pique their suspicion, and they drilled these ideas into my brother and me from a very young age. This means that even when I’m swimming to school and I see a fishing boat decal I could easily snatch and proudly show off to my friends, I don’t swim towards the boat. I swim in the opposite direction. I hide in the swaying coral, and let the darkness obscure the whites of my eyes.

I do understand that my parents are only looking out for our safety when they force us to hide, but it doesn’t change the fact that my classmates would think I were cooler if I could capture a flag from the humans. All of the most popular students in the class have them. My best friend even has a barramundi flag of her own, all custom painted and printed. But I would never go against my parents. Not after the stories I heard growing up.