Night watch

I am on the 10 till midnight watch, its dark, the moon is waining and rises much later at the moment. 

There is a good breeze blowing from the sturn quarter and we are doing 6 or 7 knots occasionally 8, the mainsail out one side of the boat,  the jib held out on the other side with a pole. Hal, the wind vane nodding back and forth on the transom keeping us on course. 

It's warm,  t-shirt and shorts are fine.
There is a glimmer of light coming up from below and some dim instrumemt lights in the cockpit. Sit in the stern and look out of the boat and there is nothing man-made to see. Below the horizon the sea is inky dark with the occasional splash of white spray on the top of a wave.  The water seems to rush along the sides and off the back of the boat faster than we are moving.  Swirls of phosphorescent with occasional glowing balls of light stream back off the transom to be mixed in with the wake. 

Above the horizon the sky is slightly lighter,  covered with stars, the million tiny pinpricks of the Milkey Way glowing across a huge swathe. Thousands of bigger  brighter stars making up the constellations, a few of which I recognise. The Southern cross off to port, no longer needed for navigation but still an obvious indicator of our heading, Westwards  ever Westward. It is a reminder that the sailors of the past who used the stars for all their navigation were so much better at this than we are. With a star app on a phone it is possible to recognise everything. If you are lucky a shooting star streeks across the sky,  normally you catch it out of the corner of your eye and it is gone before you can focus.

Its not quiet,  but there are few sounds,  water rushing and gurgling along the hull,  sometimes a breaking wave,  creaking gear, sometimes a flapping sail and the occasional call of a sea bird flying in the dark, there must be more than one or why would they call?, it is too dark to see. 

Every 10 minutes or so check the instruments and have a good look around,  there is never anything there,  in 10 days and 1600 miles we have seen 3 fishing boats, but still you must look. Stargazing, listening,  maybe read for a while and repeat. 

There is movement below and a head appears, a silhouette in the companion way, the watch is over and it is someone else's turn to sit and enjoy this increadable place, I can go and sleep.

Its not always this calm and peaceful, sometimes sails need reefing or adjustments,  occasionally something stop working and help must be summoned from below to sort out the issue. Some nights the stars are hidden by cloud, then you realise how what dark really means.

If it were a later watch at some point the sky would lighten and the sun would rise. Sometimes in a blaze of glory, golden and splendid, other times creeping up behind clouds unseen into a gray sky.

At the moment we are about as far from land as it is possible to get although as we are past 1/2 way land is getting closer not further away, I wonder haw many people have ever been here, only a few i suspect.

In 6 hours time there will be another watch,  that one in daylight and company, the boat waking at the beginning of a new day, we are so privileged to experience this and spend time in this unique place. We all look forward to our next landfall, new places to explore but also I need to remember this time and savore it, I will probably never be here again. 

Tim