Light Sources

At Sea
37 57.46 N 075 11.36 W

It is 0520 in the morning. Cape May, NJ is about 65 miles behind us and The Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel about 65 miles ahead. I'm sitting alone on watch. The winds are very light, and Tarwathie is barely moving at 3.8 knots. Mister Monitor is steering, so I'm free to blog.

It is a very dark night. No moon, and crystal clear. The stars are brilliant and beautiful. As I gaze around, I become aware of the other sources of light.

To the east is Venus, which rose just a few minutes ago. You know how the moon sometimes creates a band of light reflecting off the surface of the water; the band staring at the moon and ending at your feet? Well, Venus is bright enough to do that now. I see Venusian light making a band that ends at my feet. (Wow! How cool is that? I just used the word Venusian into a blog post:)

Rising from Venus at an angle is the Milky Way. Watching that, I just saw a satellite passing by, and an airplane heading north. I regret not having the current schedules for Hubble or Space Station flyovers with me. I get those from http://www.heavens-above.com

In the water, Tarwathie leaves a bright blue-green wake of phosphorescence as she cuts through the water. The phosphorescence in these waters is much brighter than I've ever seen in tropical waters. Miles told me that it is caused by bacteria that are brought north by migrating jellyfish. Cool.

Looking straight up, my anchor light is on, and by its light I can see the reflective strips on the bottom of our Windex. The Windex says that the wind is clocking around behind us. Too bad, that means I'll have to drop the sails and start the motor soon.

Dead ahead are the red and green reflections of my bow lights shining on the stainless steel pulpit. Astern, the white stern light reflects off the stainless tubes back there.

On the horizon to the SW is Assateague Light House FL2W3S (2 white flashes every 3 seconds). I guess we are about 10 miles off shore.

To the NW is a dome shaped glow of city lights. It must be Ocean City, Maryland. To the W is a band of faint man made light, perhaps lights along a highway. I can't tell. I can also see the red blinking lights of two radio/TV towers.

In front of me are the instruments and the compass card. I love the appearance of the illuminated compass card. It defines a plane that appears to float free and stationary in space while everything else rocks in 3 dimensions.

As I sit here and type, brightest of all is the laptop screen. Even when fully dimmed it is bright enough to spoil my night vision. Therefore, I'm going to strop writing now, turn off the laptop, and return to my enjoyment of the night. Tomorrow, I'll define a night mode for my desktop with white text on red background.

But wait! As I wrote the above, the first light of false dawn appeared to the east. Actual dawn is at 0648.