How Not To Pray

We have just sailed from Mindoro to Panay, these being two islands in the Philippines. On the way, we got into such bad weather that 'dread' is a good way to describe our feelings. In the past I must confess that I have resorted to prayer, bargaining with god, pleading and so on in situations of this sort, and this time too I found my thought patterns automatically forming the words " Oh God, please make it stop, or at least not get any worse, please, please... Let me live, God, please...Don't let that wave hit me in the face....oof, well not the next one....oof...don't let us sink.."
This time I decided to try to fight it. You must understand that generally people who are scared to death are less rational than people who are, for instance, sitting in a dry,stationary room without 2000 metres of roiling sea 2 metres below them. So, I started out by paying attention to my thoughts. Every time I caught myself whinging on I stopped myself with a sharp " Stop it!!!". This was all very well, but didn't get me any further than arguing with myself, although given enough time I may have managed to cure the automatic tendency to pray. The next step was to make myself look at the situation logically, and that went like this;
"Is this the worst weather there could be?"
"No, it could get worse (sob...)"
"So it's not as bad as it could be, and it isn't actually getting worse, is it?"
"Well, no, I suppose it's staying about the same."
"And we are travelling in the right direction, more or less?"
"Well, yes, but it's wet and scary and there are big waves and it's dark and I can only hear them and then they hit me in the face and I'm covered in salt water and it's horrid..."
"Yes, but we aren't actually sinking at all, so far, are we?"
"Please don't say that... Well, no, we aren't sinking yet, I'm just scared of sinking."
"So we are travelling in the right direction, not sinking and the weather isn't getting any worse. Even if it gets worse we can always run off downwind.Meanwhile we are getting closer to a safe port, and it will be morning soon.What are we praying for?"
This really worked, and I felt comforted enough to go and make some somewhat soggy sandwiches, a result I never managed to acheive with prayer, and I didn't even have to promise anything! No more being blackmailed by god!