The night watch

05:30UTC 24/11/08 26'48N 068'05W

Woken by Karla, who has finished her two hour watch and is hurrying for some sleep, I stagger around the boat groping for my waterproof jacket and trousers, then my boots and lifejacket. Slowly waking up, I reach out of the hatchway doors, find the harness line and clip it to my lifejacket. I step out on deck and into another world.

Feet planted securely apart, I grab hold of the sprayhood edge with both hands and steady myself as I put my head above the sprayhood and into the warm but invigorating twenty five knots of breeze. The boat is a shadowy starlit shape below me, stretching out into the darkness and carving a path through the dimly lit ocean. In the water, the onrushing force of the boat pushes away boiling cauldrons of dull white capped waves and makes little creatures phosphoresce as they are churned beneath us. The sparks of green life make a carpet of stars mirroring those above.

And above, the ceiling is vibrant and packed with a billion seen and unseen suns, covering the sky from horizon to horizon. With no moon, starlight lights our world well enough and I search the sky for my new friend Leo who I found on this trip, cavorting with Virgo in a north eastern corner of the sky. He's harder to see tonight, there's just too many other stars for him to shelter within but eventually I pin him down, mid leap.

A shooting star blazes through Orion's heart and dies a lonely death behind the mainsail. A dull and lifeless rock ends a billion miles of anonymous travel in a fiery split second traverse of our sky seen by me and who else? Probably no-one else on the planet. We are privileged indeed to be riding our little spaceship through this vast universe.

A rare splash of spray lands on my face, suggesting it might be time to go back below and check the radar, our course and maybe raid the snack cupboard. I've got another half hour to go before I wake Yan and, wonderful as it is out here, it won't keep me from my precious four hours of sleep before I'm woken again.

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