What a sunrise!

I took over at 1:30 am from Rowan who had passed two tankers, but my shift until 5am, I never saw a single boat, the radar set to a 36 mile radius never picked up a thing.

We did have a very strange VHF alarm go off at about 3am which I woke R up for, but never worked out what it was for……all we could do was switch it off. I spotted this big orange light on the horizon directly in front of us, I knew it was far away but thought it couldn’t be 36 miles away as the radar was showing nothing. I went and sat in the helm, to get a better look, it was such a balmy night the breeze was welcome. I was also hoping to see the meteor shower that is currently on. Sadly I never saw any shower but my big orange light on the horizon came to view……it was the most amazing huge orange crescent moon rising above the horizon at 4:30am. Quite spectacular!

The white speck is the crescent moon rising at dawn, it was orange when it came over the horizon, I just wasn’t quick enough to get a photo of it then.

Rowan had got the sails back up at 5am when he took over, so I had a very good sleep and lie in with tea delivered at about 8:30 am!

The sea is very calm the big Atlantic swells from yesterday have gone so very comfy for our Sunday breakfast cook up. A steamy day and by about 11 am we had to get the motors on as the wind had gone, but at least in this flat water it is comfortable and we are heading directly East, which is all good for our route.

I made bread in the morning and besides only getting seaweed stuck on the fishing lines it was a very quiet morning.

Lots of reading, an extreme Sudoku and a Bridge lesson from Rowan made the afternoon pass by. I’m reading The Glass Castle which is in a similar vein to Educated, I’m really enjoying it too. Makes you appreciate just how tough some kids have it even in a country as first world as America.

It was so calm in the evening we did roast vegetables on the BBQ with smoked Quinoa (fromSuffolk!) and Bulgar wheat, with buttery mushrooms.

My evening treat from R was to watch Tiger Exotic that he had downloaded on the marina wifi. Phoebs has been riveted by it and I have to say it just reinforces views (from the books) about demented Americans! I seem to be overloading on crazy American behaviour and it’s pretty depressing, so can’t wait to move on.

I did the first shift, by midnight the wind picked up, I woke poor R up to get the sails up and for me to have a turn at sleeping. I was on again at 4:30am and had a wonderful sunrise, just with a slightly narrower moon than yesterday.