Search This Blog

Saturday, June 25, 2011

Magical night and day of June 23rd...

Ship's log

Lat 11 degrees 20 minutes N

Long 134 degrees 44 minutes W

In the middle of the early morning hours of today, June 23rd, Bill was on watch and I was sleeping while Terrwyn sailed (seemingly all on her own with Monti gently telling Tilly where to go!! and she responds without any arguments... lovely!!)... Bill decided to have a little check around Terrwyn. I was awakened hearing Bill calling me to come up on deck quickly! I jumped out of our berth and scooted up the companionway and joined Bill as he hung over the port lifelines. As my eyes adjusted to the night's darkness I saw something magical! There were lights illuminating under Terrwyn's hull (it looked like the lights in a hot tub) and our bow wave was covered with hundreds of tiny lights as it shot away from the boat. Phosphoresence filled the water and the tops of the waves twinkled all around us. So magical!! Then I looked at our stern wake and it looked as though we were leaving a trail of fairy lights marking where we had been. We had both experienced seeing phosphoresence (biolumination of plankton) in the ocean before but nothing like this... incredible. Truly amazing!

It seems that over the last 24 hours everything has clicked for me! I am in love with all of this!! The air and water temperatures are finally tropical with the air heavy with a unique scent that one only smells in the tropics... heavy sweet salty and... well... tropical!!

Today we also found our tuner for the ukuleles so we brought them out and tuned them and both of us started playing... as Bill headed down for a nap I continued playing and singing as we skimmed along the ocean with our jib and beautiful red drifter with the white triskele flying high...this is what it is all about!!

Bill is deep into studying celestial navigation... that ancient and almost magical (to those of us not mathematically inclined) skill! He heads out to the foredeck every mid day with his beautiful sextant to take the noon site. At night he can be found with neck craned peering at the stars that peek at us from behind the incessant clouds. Oh for a clear night sky!! He is totally immersed in this work... as only Bill does!!

I am going to take a break from the series that I am reading right now to read "We, the Navigators" by David Lewis. It is an indepth study and practical testing of the intriguing question of how the Polynesian peoples navigated these vast seemingly endless and trackless seas. When and where best to read this.

Out in the middle of the deep blue Tropical Sea!!!

Cath and Bill

3 comments:

  1. Hi Cathy,

    Thanks for sharing the magic with us. It sounds wonderful.

    Dave and Rosemary Lesser

    ReplyDelete
  2. Wow! What a lovely description of the magic you are observing while sailing on the wide blue ocean. Can just hear you singing Pink's 'Raise Your Glass!' with your ukuleles

    Mark and Laura

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi again Bill and Cathy,
    We are really enjoying following your blogs. The magic sounds fantastic and I am glad to hear that you have finally got out the ukeleles.
    I wish I could hear the two of you playing and singing your hearts out on the wide wide blue ocean. Look forward to the pictures when you get where you can send them.
    Have fun!
    Carole and Richard

    ReplyDelete