Jam Cruise 22 had not yet left the port the first time I saw someone almost die.

The MSC Divina—an 1,100-foot mass of sunbaked white metal that first set sail 14 years ago—was still lashed to land in Miami when I decided to try one of its dozen-plus hot tubs, before the 3,300 other passengers had the same brilliant idea. It was early February, the Saturday before the Super Bowl, so I was talking about football with four fellow hot-water enthusiasts when a sixth started to join us. Standing at the tub’s edge, he struggled with his shirt, wrestling it so strenuously that his swim trunks were hanging halfway down his ass before he finally turned toward the water. Unbothered, he climbed in, nodded, pulled his headphones over his ears, and closed his eyes.

Every three minutes, one of us would notice that the stranger had nodded off and was slipping under the bubbles, his headphones taking on water. We’d tap him on the shoulder, ask if he was OK, receive a lopsided smile, and repeat the cycle. It took us a moment to hear him finally thrashing beneath the water, his commotion drowned by the drone of the jets. A woman from Massachusetts hooked him by his armpit and tugged until he’d surfaced, struggling to cough his lungs free of chlorine. A lifeguard rushed over, pulled him from the tub, and encouraged him to stand up slowly. The guard helped him dry off, get dressed, and offered to take him somewhere—his room, the infirmary, back home? As they toddled away, the lifeguard glanced back at us over his shoulder and half-grimaced, half-grinned: It’s too early for this shit, his face seemed to say, but have a great time, anyway.

I assumed then that this is simply how life would be on Jam Cruise, a five-day trip around a tiny sliver of the Atlantic with 30 bands that very loosely land under the already wide umbrella of “jam.” A little more than two decades ago, Jam Cruise helped inaugurate the now rather large industry of music-centric exotic vacations—that is, bands and fans together on a boat or at some warm resort for several days. I’d never been to either, so when an invitation arrived, I accepted. After the whole drowning ordeal just an hour after I’d been on board, I expected that maybe I was in much too deep. Maybe the friend who had called this the “boof boat” was being too lighthearted?

The next morning, as we neared Cuba, headed south, I could hear a stranger telling my wife, Tina, a story across a table in the byzantine cafeteria. I sat down, expecting to commandeer conversational duties for Tina, the household introvert, who had agreed to join me on Jam Cruise only because it included a big gym and two beach stops. Instead, I went speechless: Here was the man who nearly drowned, wearing the same hat and headphones but now bright-eyed and beaming. He didn’t recognize me, so he introduced himself as George, saying that he had picked the boat this year over seeing Phish at a resort in Mexico because his recent ex was there, not here. “Don’t date a Phish chick, bro,” he said, laughing and slapping the table so hard his tower of buffet plates shuddered. “Those bitches are crazy.”

We soon told George goodbye. Tina didn’t believe me when I insisted that was the guy I’d helped rescue. How did he look so healthy and happy? In the 16 hours I’d been on the boat, multiple people had told me Jam Cruise was a special place to be, a miracle in motion where strangers met and got married, where unexpected collaborations blew minds, where bad things just didn’t happen. Wait a second: Were they…right?