I disagree; I felt that almost ruined the thing for me, harkening too strongly back to an old Twilight Zone formula. Up until that point, I liked it quite a bit, although it was a little bit of a stretch that the captain should suddenly have such a change of heart about these phenomena -- and then I saw that ending and said, "oh, not again . . . "And I like the reveal at the end of the story. While this is a common device in sci fi stories I think it works well in this case.
To me, the better surprise was that the ship didn't turn out to just be a seafaring vessel, which I had gotten to thinking it was.
The descriptive language was impressively beautiful, btw.
I really feel that this device has been way overused, and should be avoided, maybe even included on the List Of Things Not To Be Done.