I can relate to Noah. When I was growing up, my family had a house on the Jersey shore and a couple of boats. I learned how to sail and I liked it. One day, when I was fifteen, my older brother and I took out our fifteen-footer. This was the perfect day for sailing. The wind was really kicking up and the bay was a little more than choppy. We had a large course that we usually sailed that was roughly triangular and on a regular day would take an hour or so. That day we just flew down the downwind leg. It was the first time I had seen our mast actually curve with stress. We had to "tack back" the upwind leg, which means zigzagging across the wind, as close into the wind as you can possibly get. Contrary to what you landlubbers might think, going across the wind can actually push you faster than the wind itself is going. It also pushes the boat up on its side and can flip the boat, which is generally undesirable. To counteract this, small-boat sailors will do what is called "hiking out." This involves hooking your ankle under a strap and leaning almost all of your body out of the boat. I would do this with my face down towards the water so I could get further out, and we could get closer into the wind with more speed. On this particular day, I was hiking way out when suddenly I heard my brother shout and the next thing I knew I was kissing a crab on the bottom of the bay. The boat had unexpectedly heeled over and changed direction, lowering my side and giving me a salt-water shampoo. I picked my head up only to have it smacked by the boom (lower strut of the sail) as it came swinging across the boat. This maneuver is called a "jibe" and it is generally considered bad manners for the helmsman to perform it unannounced. Some of you are probably expecting a drash on Cain and Abel at this point, but nothing like that happened. When I turned to politely inquire of my brother his reasons for trying to drown me and reshape my skull, I saw that he was holding the tiller (steering rod) up in the air. It had broken clean off due to the high stress caused by the speed and pounding of the waves.
How does this relate to Noah, the holy yidele wants to know. Just as my brother tried to do, Noah sailed with no rudder. Usually, in our life, we work in a partnewith Hashem. We choose where to put our energies and Hashem gives us the results. Of course, the energy to try to do what we choose also comes from Hashem but the choosing is always from us. The Torah says that Noah is a tzaddik and it also says that Avraham was a tzaddik. In comparing the two, many criticize Noah for not arguing with Hashem to save the world as Avraham argued to save Sodom and Gomorra. I think the level of Noah was that he left the decisions up to Hashem. The nature of the way in which the world was destroyed made it so that Noah (i.e. all of mankind) played a passive role in the decision-making process and could not argue with Hashem. G-d said that He would never destroy the world in that manner again. To me, that means that man will never be taken out of the decision-making process again. It is interesting that Noah didn't argue with Hashem, Avraham argued with Hashem and lost, but it wasn't until the giving of the tablets that Moshe argued with Hashem and won, even though the people were just as guilty in the previous two cases.
What I learned from the case of my brother's broken rudder and Noah's rudderless adventure was that punishments have a purpose. They put you where you absolutely would not have put yourself. Anytime you find yourself in a place where you don't want to be, as if your rudder were broken, as yourself, "If I didn't guide myself to this place, who did, and why did He want me to be here?"