The Night Watch

We eat at 18.00  as the sun starts to go down and the first night watch

(18.00-22.00) comes on. With the gathering darkness, so the atmosphere onboard changes.  Voices become quieter, lifejackets go on, the off-watch takes to their bunks ready to be roused at 22.00. The on-watch settles into their positions.

We are in the first phase of a full moon, so as the sunlight recedes it is replaced by a shimmer of silver that tinges the sea, the boat and ourselves.  We all look out for the lights of other boats in the fleet. If a boat is ahead of us we will see its white stern light, these yachts become our prey. We work hard to overhaul them. Major sail evolutions at night can be difficult so we don't fly the spinnaker after dark. We tweak the sails though, trying to tease an extra half knot.  lf that knot is maintained it means we cover an extra two miles in our four hour watch. So far our hunting has been good and we have managed to overtake every boat that we have been able to see ahead of us. On night watch there is no better feeling than to see the lights of a boat we have overtaken finally disappear below the horizon behind us. Lost.

So far we have not yet been overtaken.

At night it is still quite chilly and we wear fleeces or jackets. As the watch proceeds the tendency is for silence to descend, each man or woman in their own thoughts, constantly watching the sea, the sails, the stars.  And the stars, even with the full moon are brilliant, there is no light pollution and we can see Orion and the Plough clearly along with a full canopy of other smaller lights. The brightest object in the sky by far is the International Space Station, for the last two days we have seen it rise in the North East behind the boat at about 03.00. It is the last object in to be chased out of the sky by the rising sun at 18.30. As we look up at their loneliness they look down on ours.