A nice opening gambit, with a lot of potential.

Solidly written, but with a bit of repetition in the second paragraph which could easily be trimmed (boat, boat, boat, bow, bow, beach, beach), thus freeing up more space elsewhere. Also, a double ‘watched’ in the last line. Other than this nitpicking, a promising start.

A bit straight-forward in terms of the telling, but it’s solid all the same. Definitely a bewitching start to a tale…or perhaps its end of the tale for the good captain?