Night Watch, Watching The World

Overnight passage from Portomao, Portugal to Rota, Spain. For Dottie and me, we have done 5 oceans of night watch passages, but this is the first two-handed overnight trip we’ve done. Three hours on, three hours off. You sleep, I sleep, rinse and repeat until someone makes the coffee when the sun comes up.

The winds are light, coming from our stern quarter, there’s no seas, the sun set was amazing, and we expect to get to Rota just in time for our tiny pastry and coffees.

As the first watch moves on, the stars come out above and below. There’s no moon, so the milky way leaves its smeary thicket of stars like a racing stripe across the heavens lighting the canvas of the sky. Below there are stars in the water as well. With each Amari movement through the water the stars appear. Not reflections, but the bioluminescent organisms in the water get jostled and make their frustration known by providing a light show out here to starboard, inches below the surface.

It’s quiet and still. I have the feeling as I peer outward, that the world is looking back. We make eye contact, looking without judging, feeling without emoting, being with each other in a deeper peace. For this moment, this now, I have the world to myself.