Ever since I was a little kid, my dreams usually take place in the ocean. Whether it was drowning, beach cliffs, etc. Then when I lived on a boat for 3 years, my dreams were always in the ocean, usually in a marina or mooring field, usually in a storm or generally shitty boating weather. Now it's been 2 years since I was a liveaboard, and yet I still dream of boats, mooring lines, storms, marinas, bilge pumps.....
i had a boat i once lived on too. but most of my dreams take place in forests and small towns in forests. understandable as the latter being what i have more experience of having grown up in. (double gemini with a torus rising, lots of air an a bit of earth)
I'm terrified of the ocean. I know it's illogical but there is something about the vastness of it. You can't see across, can't see the bottom, it's cold, wet and full of creatures bite, sting, etc...When i dream about it it's usually a nightmare
I dream about the ocean frequently. It's always swimming or surfing and half-knowing there are sharks but never a nightmare or getting eaten. It's weird because I don't like the ocean when I'm awake. I won't go in it. Sharks and big rogue waves... Yikes!
Your dreams seem to be about stressors associated with watercraft, situations in which you would normally be comfortable but there's an edge of danger or unpleasantness. It's a very common genre for dreams, much like for a person who did well in school to dream about having difficulty with an examination that she didn't study for, or a person who likes to travel dreaming about being at an airport to check-in or board an international flight and not being able to find her passport. A person with a theater background similarly may dream of being on stage in the wrong costume or not remembering lines. At one point in my career, I did well in a job involving preparing and checking financial statements, but I used to dream about columns of figures that didn't add up properly, that didn't "foot." Also, it isn't that you dream about difficulty on the water with any great frequency. You simply are more likely to be startled awake during those dreams, and you are therefore more likely to remember them. You probably have vastly more dreams about the water that are pleasant, but you aren't aware of them when you wake up. It doesn't take a sudden shock during a dream to wake a person up. The situations you say you dream about involve concentration and problem solving - you have to give attention to a mooring line or bilge pump and it's a matter of safety and sometimes survival. Concentrating to solve a "dream problem" is often enough to wake a person up such that the dream will be remembered while awake.
