Your experience of recovering the scent of the sea is really about rediscovering past experiences that persist in memory and are often elicited by sensory experiences that stimulate remembering. The same is true for me and centres around the sights and sounds of rain. If you think about it, the sea is the inspiration but the true experience lies in recovering parts of your past that seemed forever to be lost. The persistence of the past is a theme in my own writing as it was for Proust in his great work, In Search of Lost Time and as it is for you. When you come right down to it, you are your memories - lose them and you lose parts of yourself. This was a well-written and engaging piece of prose and I encourage you to try pursuing this theme in fiction, in a short story, perhaps, that might even lead to a longer work. This was the 31st call for entries by theinkwell? I wonder why - did nobody else respond? That part of your post puzzled me.
Thinking the matter through, I think you are quite right: "the real experience is in recovering parts of your past that seemed lost forever". I agree that the revaluation of the past is a great theme in literature. Sometimes it happens to be something unconscious. I will follow your advice, I will give more emphasis to that aspect in my creative fiction.
Regarding the participation, there was, and it was notorious, about forty different proposals. There is a post highlighting some of them. I'll leave you the link in case you are interested. Thank you very much for your assessment. I will love to read your texts. Regards!