SOS from the USS Sunshine

Overnight on the third evening of our cruise to the Bahamas, my wife was awakened by my voice coming from the bathroom of our cabin.  “Can someone come help me!” was the plea that she heard.  I wasn’t yelling, but I was speaking in a voice louder than what I usually use. She got up, came to the bathroom, and opened the door.  Looking into the bathroom from our cabin, there was a shower to the left, the sink and a toilet to the right and a grab bar mounted on the wall across from the door.  I was tugging on the grab bar like I was trying to open a locked door.  She spoke to me waking me up.  I don’t remember ever being a sleepwalker before this night.  But there is an explanation for what I was saying.

I was dreaming that I had just gotten back to the boat from a trip ashore.  In my dream, Andrea and I were trying to get back to our room from areas of the ship where we didn’t normally go.  We had made our way down a stairway, reaching the bottom of the stairwell where it was dark and I couldn’t see. At this point, I had gotten separated from Andrea and I was feeling around on the walls to determine which way to go. It seemed like there were walls on all four sides and the stairway was gone.  Because we were with a group returning from our excursion, I thought there were people other than Andrea that could help me get out of this stairwell if she didn’t hear me.  That was why I called for “someone” instead of saying her name.

Andrea got me back to bed and the next morning, we did more of a debrief. I wasn’t sure if the whole thing was a dream or not.  She assured me that it all happened the way I remembered.  I told her about why I was saying what I said. She told me that she heard me earlier when I got up and went to the bathroom. She wasn’t sure if I had gotten up again later when I started asking for help or if I had just stayed in there the whole time. We think I was loud enough that the people in the room next door could have heard me but they never complained.