Star show

Last night we did an overnight passage from Mayaguana in the Bahamas to Turks & Caicos. Nightpassages can be easy and fun specially if you have the right equipments, such as radar, autopilot, & AIS. I would say autopilot is the most important and unfortunately our autopilot is out of order. Someone has to be behind helm at all time. Kelly and I have been taking 3 hours shifts at the time. However, if you are sailing close haul or on a reach, you can just lock the wheel, adjust sails and she will keep the course. And I have been napping few minutes at the time this way during many passages, it might sound crazy but that's how it works. The key is to get up every 10-18 min and look around for other vessels. Night sailing is thrilling. Imagine being in the middle of the ocean where there is no sight of any land, no lights and all you see is dark water and stars. The whole sky is lit by stars, you can identify each constellation in detail. Folks, you might watch television on land at night but we have nothing else but the sky full of stars. You can't really choose what commercials to watch and we can't choose to not see the shooting stars. Lets put it this way, the night-show starts with a Sunset, which is different every night. The other night, as bonus we got a Mahi Mahi on the hook right at sunset. After sunset-show, the sky changes colors slowly and all the stars show up. During the star-show if you are lucky the Moon rises and lids up the dark ocean. And before you get tired of the moon, slowly the sky brightens up and our mother star rises. this is a unique experience and I hope all of you can go through it sometimes during your life time.
Love from the star show