Midnight steering

Last night on the midnight watch, I steered Europa by the position of Arcturus in the mizzen shrouds.I’ve been on board for two weeks now, and have seen dark skies, bright gibbous moonlit skies, fog so thick we couldn’t see a thing. Prior to this voyage I had been in many dark sky areas on land, in fact I spent my childhood in one, learning the stars and planets, but had never been out of sight of land on the ocean. Now it seems dreamlike.We have watched as the fog dispersed after two days, first at the zenith and a few stars appeared, then more and more until half the sky was visible, and we knew with the rising sun the fog would finally be gone. We have watched the moon skip across the sky, from the tiniest silver curve , in the evening twilight ten days ago, to the fat misshapen orb that lit up our graveyard watch last night, sinking into the orange haze in the west before the sun rose.And we’ve watched the planets. Jupiter next to Spica in Virgo, brilliant in the south, Saturn outshining Antares, between Scorpio and Sagittarius. As we’ve waited for the sunrise, Venus appears, glittering her promise of another amazing day. The word “planet” comes from the Greek for “wanderer,” as the ancients noticed them moving amongst the stars, and not keeping to a fixed position. I am glad to have watched three of them from the decks of Europa, Ocean Wanderer.We can’t photograph the environment on deck on a midnight watch, we can only try to remember it. The gaze up into the rigging, the lie of the yards and the motion of the sails, the song of the riggingas it moves in the wind, under faint silver light and the quiet of the night watch. At dark of the moon, the stars steal the glory, hanging there in the rigging like strings of fairy lights. So many that it’s a challenge to pick out our familiar constellations, turning around and around on the heaving deck until we lose our balance. Last night under the gibbous moon it was easier, only the brightest and therefore most familiar stars were visible.And so Arcturus was in the mizzen shroud last night, as I steered our course west-southwest towards New Brunswick. Just as we see the motion of the bowsprit against the horizon, showing how the ship is moving up into the wind or backing off, and we can anticipate heading changes before they register on the heading indicator, so this bright familiar star served me. I found a point in the rigging that the star danced around, and let it circle that point on the roll and pitch. When it moved off that circle, a small correction kept our heading.The rotation of the earth means that on a four hour watch, the star wheels around through sixty degrees of arc across the celestial sphere. So about every ten minutes I needed to adjust which point in the rigging the star would circle, as Bootes the herdsman dove toward the surface of the sea.This, of course, is not celestial navigation. Navigation is far more complex, involving tables and sightings and calculations, well beyond my abilities as a trainee. But the romance and poetry of steering a tall ship by a star last night will seal the memories that no photograph could capture.