In the small cabin, Chris banks the fire and thinks about his Uncle Jack.

In a flashback, Uncle Jack calls Chris’s mother to invite Chris to go sailing in Alaska. Uncle Jack’s only brother, Chris’s father, recently passed away. Chris’s mother warns him that Uncle Jack “can’t be happy unless he’s facing danger” (5). Excited at the prospect of missing school, Chris encourages his mother to approve of the idea, and she reluctantly agrees, urging him to be careful.

Chris flies alone from Vancouver to Kodiak, though his flight is five hours delayed. Uncle Jack picks him up and takes him to a tiny sailboat named Puff moored at the docks. Inside the cabin is a boy slightly older than Chris. The boy is rude and distant, and Uncle Jack doesn’t explain who he is. Uncle Jack tells them about an island of trash in the ocean and how a tsunami in Japan two years ago has washed all kinds of trash toward the Alaskan coast.

After they set off the following morning, Chris gets seasick and takes several pills. He lies in the bunk, groggy and unable to think. Soon the sea is entering the cabin, the floorboards are shattering, and water rises over his bed. Disoriented by the seasickness pills, Chris takes a moment to realize what is happening.

In the present day, Frank stays in the cabin while Chris runs through the dark forest to the skeleton tree on the point overlooking the sea. As he looks out over the water, he’s disappointed to see no ships coming toward him. He hasn’t seen Uncle Jack since the day the boat sank. However, Chris is certain today is the day they’ll be rescued.

In a flashback, Chris is in the hull of the sailboat as water pours in. He’s groggy from the medicine and can’t fully grasp what’s happening. He crawls out to find Uncle Jack tossing Frank into the small lifeboat. Uncle Jack asks Chris what he saved from the cabin, but Chris has nothing. Uncle Jack goes into the cabin and tosses a radio up to Chris, who misses. He sees disappointment in his uncle’s eyes, and then the boat goes under, taking Uncle Jack with it.

Chris dives into the lifeboat, frees it from its tether, and bails water out as quickly as it refills from the raging sea. Frank is awake but in shock, unmoving and unseeing. As night falls, the sea calms, but Frank still doesn’t move. At dawn they spot land, and Chris rows for the entire day until they’re cast from the dinghy into the breaking waves.

In the dark, Frank nearly drowns getting to shore, and Chris is forced to save him rather than save the lifeboat. In the process, he loses his boots. At dawn, the boys realize that the cove where they washed ashore will soon be covered in water as the tide rises.

Frank drinks fresh water from the rock and eats seaweed off the beach. Chris doesn’t know how to do these things, and Frank rudely says his father taught him. Frank asks whether Jack is dead, and Chris nods. Frank accuses Chris of not trying to save Uncle Jack. They march along the coast, Frank eating berries and snapping branches into Chris’s face. They call each other names, squabbling and bickering, and Frank won’t explain who he is or how he knew Uncle Jack.

They try to light a fire but fail and spend a cold, damp night in the woods before continuing to walk north. In anger, Frank goes south, and Chris finds a beach covered in trash, where he soon finds two flip-flops to replace his lost boots. At the top of a peak near the sea he sees wilderness in all directions. Frank comes running up behind him, and Chris learns that he isn’t the only one who doesn’t want to be alone.