Stars and sunsets
There are some people on board who love singing and so we are blessed with sea shanties regularly. They know the lyrics to an astonishing number of songs, and teach each other more. Especially when they sing under the stars and full moon this makes for magic moments.
Even without a midnight choir, we have had some incredible nights; yesterday Nat and Case took me along when they went off identifying constellations. There is probably no place on earth where you can see the stars this well. We could identify one after another; every star we were looking for was visible. We started on portside and when we found all signs on that side, we just would move and so we went around the ship, viewing the sky in a 360 view.
Not all evenings have been clear skies with a shining milky way. Apparently, there have been a number of rainy nights. Not just a little rain; hours of the sky pouring down. I am part of day watch, so if these squalls happen in the middle of the night, I am normally at sleep. On board, nobody can experience it all. In the first week some of the crew did not want to miss a thing as there is always something happening, 24 hours long. There could be bioluminescence at two in the night, dolphins at six in the morning, games in the deckhouse in the evening. If you don’t want to miss anything, when would you possibly go to sleep? By now everyone has found their rhythm. The voyage crew has one of three watches: 8 to 12, 12 to 4 or 4 to 8. Every moment has its benefits. The watches have changed three times now, and so every watch has been up at sunrise, sunset or the middle of the night at some time during this trip. With these long voyages there is time to experience it all.
The benefit of everyone being up at dinnertime, is that everyone can see the sunset. We watched ‘Around cape horn’ on deck last week. Filmed in 1929, it follows Irving Johnson on his journey around, as you may have guessed, Cape Horn with the Peking. Full of heavy storms, danger and heavy work, you might wonder why they would sign up for such a thing. The last line of the film is Irving Johnsen saying the following: “Why do they sign up for all this misery in some cases? But they kind of forget about that, they think of the thrills but mainly they think of the sailing along as the sun goes down in the Tradewinds. Oh, it is absolutely lovely”. And here we are, witnessing this every day – without having to endure any misery.