The mystery of the dancing stars
And now, the mystery of the dancing lights around Venus. Europa has had a beautiful, bright Venus off her starboard bow each evening since leaving Rapa Nui. Imagine a beautiful night with a full moon overhead and calm seas.
The water desert surrounded us with no other vessels seen for more than a week. Standing watch on the foredeck, I suddenly saw strange, moving lights dead ahead near Venus. My more scientifically minded shipmates insisted these must be stars, other planets, meteors or Elon Musk’s satellites. I know that from a moving ship, stars appear to dance with the swells, but these objects circled Venus, curving from right to left then suddenly shooting away with a red light. (Maybe I saw the red light because of the compass. I am still puzzling why the compass turns red in the night. It seems to calm the eyes according to the doctors among us. However, when I have been staring at the compass then turn my eyes to the ocean, I see big grey circles everywhere. But maybe it is helpful for other people.) Risking be thrown overboard without shouting man overboard I told the captain about the lights.
This morning the captain advised that others reported the strange light phenomenon as well also. Pff, so at least I am not losing my mind. But the mystery continues. Perhaps when I return to the internet, I will search for similar sightings and potential explanations. On the one hand I am curious, because it fascinates me and on the other hand, it frightens me a little bit. My scientific friends urge that without objective evidence, the phenomenon I observed does not exist. However, I am not a slave to conventional science so I believe what I want. It is quite astonishing that ancient cultures like the Australian Aboriginals have drawn such phenomena on their desert walls. And these drawings are very, very old. There are similar ancient artifacts elsewhere in the world created before social media encouraged and enabled hypes and hoaxes. So the mysteries persist and my scientific friends offer no explanation.
Speaking of stars, Europa’s cooks (cookies) certainly deserve a (Michelin) star, maybe two. Gjalt, Roos and Sasha are amazing. It is not a ten course menu, and there are no annoying waiters coming to your table every two minutes to ask whether everything is well, just at the moment when you want to tell your date that you like him. Accordingly you have to grasp all your courage again, but that is another story. Returning to our menu, our cookies prepare honest, nice and tasteful food and there is plenty of it. There are even homemade oats. The desserts are so nice, with several flavours. Somehow I unfortunately missed some of the desserts. Probably I was on watch.
Cooking for so many different nationalities seems like quite a challenge to me. Some like it hot others don’t. I strongly recommend that the cookies publish a cookbook, titled ‘Cooking on Bark, Even Your Kids Will Eat It’. Fraser can make beautiful pictures of the cooked food. This book should be a tribute to all the amazing cookies the Bark has had over the years. Maybe they can have a television programme as well. Gjalt was already on television with his cooking skills. So he has experience…
I don’t know what they will cook in the coming days, I just hope one thing that they don’t come up with polenta…
By the way, the showers are great. The water is very soft and one experiences very soft hair after washing. The condition for this experience is that you have hair…
