Nighttime shifts have become everyone’s unanimous favorite. In the same breath, they can also be the most terrifying.
Either way, they seem to be the most consistently awe-inspiring. In calm weather, any fear of night abates with the stillness. The first stars arrive as pinpoints in the sky, and yet long after the sun has set, the haze of daylight seems to hang on.
The haze clears throughout the night, leaving the only haze as the band of the Milky Way. This too disappears as the moon rises, blood-red on the horizon, bright enough to leave all but the brightest stars visible in the nighttime sky. When the bioluminescence is strong, it gives the impression that we are traveling through one medium – just space with stars above and below us. I had seen this once before, seven years ago on this same boat in the gulf stream of the North Atlantic Ocean. It was a night like that that called me out here again.
Here’s the way I described it almost 7 years ago:
Day 7: North Atlantic Rowing Race 2006
Saturday, 17 June 2006 11:41
Ocean Evenings
We had a moment of perfection last night. Not by us, we were just lucky enough to observe. Midnight, the stars were out with no moon or clouds. There was no horizon and the water melded to the sky. With each stroke our oars lit up the water with the brightest phosphorescence I have ever seen. It was a calm night but every few waves our boat would lift up just enough to crash and the ocean around our boat would light up like a bright green milky way. It was rowing among the stars. -Jordan