Oh John, this was great. I love the essence of a lone traveler captured here, and the parallel to nautical explorers. I also have a large scifi setting that's all built from seed ships, so it was fun to see that idea utilized by someone else. Thanks for posting this as a teaser to your upcoming scifi works, which I may get to read sooner than later. ;-)
I haven't been spoiling myself too much on scifi contest pieces in the queue, to keep a mostly clean slate when I read the final cuts.