Deafening silences

This morning I am on the 6 to 10 watch. The sun isn't up yet and sitting outside
I thought I heard doves singing as you
would sometimes hear on land. I also love hadidas when they take to the air in
the morning with a great buhah and same when
they come to roost again at night. It then dawned on me how silent it is out
here, just the sound of the hull being softly
caressed by the water. The water is flat as anything ,just a gentle swell
rolling through. A slither of the moon is visible
as she is rising upfrom the east. Soon it will be the new moon, strange thinking
that we call it that, as it has been around
for probably as long as the earth has been around. On Monday the new moon also
heralds in the Chinese new year, and 2012
will be the year of the dragon.

Last night we once again had a rare sight. We switched off all our lights as we
could see quite a bit of bioluminescence and
shined our powerful spotlight into the water to light up these incredible little
group of creatures that can produce their
own light. Apparently it is a defence meganism. When a predator approaches the
movement lights up these flashing little
green lights in the water in an effort to bamboozle the predator. Once again
strange that in an effort not to be eaten they
actually all light up, eat me, no, eat me ,hey, what about me. We aslo spotted
some small fish darting around in the light
and to our utter amazement we also spotted a seasnake, just under a meter long,
black and red sections from head to
tail.Beauty is all around us, if we only will make the effort to look around a
bit. As calm as the ocean is here by us today, just as wild she can get at times,
a beauty of another kind, another time, another place.

Nautical term today is Beaker. Spelt barrico. From the Spanish barrica, a wooden
water keg found in a ship's boat. Shoreside
, it has become a 'beaker', another name for a mug or cup. Probably where the
Afrikaans word 'beker' also comes from. Our
cup runneth over is an apt description of how blessed we are to experience a bit
of silence.

We are very much on schedule to arrive at St.Helena at first light on Sunday
morning, 240 nm to go. Our position right now
18*22'S/002*18'W. May your cup also runneth over today and may you have a
fantastic Friday.

Captain Paul