Becalmed at sunset between Fiji and Tonga 2013.
NIGHT SHIFT Heather Francis Everything shifts at sea. I am acutely aware of the strength of the wind, the direction of the waves, the position of the sun, whether the tide is rising or falling, how the clouds move across the sky, where the stars are, and how full the moon is. I am a part of something.
Since we left Panama and started sailing west, I have had the Southern Cross on our port side and the Big Dipper on the starboard side. I now know the southern sky better than the northern sky I grew up under. It is upside down and beautiful. Venus comes out at dusk instead of dawn, Orion is high in the sky during winter, and the days always seem to have almost the exact same amount of light. For thousands and thousands of miles, where I come from and where I am going to are in balance. And I am perfectly in between.
Standing up above the dodger, I reach for the binoculars and slowly scan all 360 degrees of the dark horizon. I see nothing but a smudge
of grey where the waves and sky meet. No lights. No ships. No one exists in the world but me. I sit down and take the cover off the dimmed display of the chart plotter hoping that seeing our GPS coordinates and the little boat on the screen will somehow make sense of everything. I notice that the contour line we are passing over reads that there is five thousand meters of water below the keel. I press the ‘zoom out’ button five times before even an edge of land comes up on the chart ahead of us. By then our little boat is just a speck. I quickly press the ‘zoom in’ button five mores times so that the tiny boat seems a more sensible size, dominating the sea of white surrounding it. I find my hand fondling the clip of my safety harness; slowly following the line from my life vest to the jackline, tugging it slightly just to make sure it is secure. I put the cover back on the display and the warm glow of technology is once again swallowed up by the darkness.
I cannot think too long of where we’ve come SisterShip 26
