A Pretty Impressive Light Show

This afternoon Maureen had drawn my attention to the fact that it has been 14 months since we last updated this blog. She sounded a bit alarmed -- like maybe someone has been stealing our blog posts?

I guess I was thinking about that when I was awakened this evening.

We are anchored now at Great Barrier Island in NZ. It is one of those places that is both far, and not far. It is about 40 nautical miles offshore (the way we came) and sparsely inhabited. Far enough away that it takes just a bit of effort to get here but close enough that any self respecting kiwi would still get here on a paddleboard.

This, our second day at Great Barrier Island, was a good one. One of those surprisingly rare days where we didn't get off the boat, and didn't even think about getting off. We have both enjoyed puttering at boat chores, and reading, and staying dry.

Great Barrier has been shrouded in low clouds since we got here -- like Prince Rupert but warmer. The rain comes and goes and when it arrives it is impressive. It rains hard for about 5 minutes and then stops. I collected enough rain water to do the dinner dishes just by holding a bucket under the corner of our solar panels. But then  the rain stops and we can go back to whatever it is we were doing.

I had two jobs today. One was to continue to clean and patch and repair our ratty old inflatable. The other was to work through the rigging on our spinnaker pole so that it can be deployed more easily as a whisker pole for downwind sailing. This is a job that involves quite a bit of looking at the current setup -- which just doesn't make sense -- and then going to read my book. Eventually I found the breakthrough adjustment and as I was removing and adjusting mast fittings to accommodate the new setup I realized that it had never been right from the beginning of time. Sometimes progress is slow on Sophrosyne.

That all brings me to the point of the story where I was awakened by the sound of someone smashing pots and pans above my head. Not loudly, and not persistently but just enough to get my attention. When we sleep on Sophrosyne our heads are +/-3/8" from the mast so that any sound that the mast makes is telegraphed emphatically to our attention down below. In this case, as I had run back and forth during the day to avoid the rain showers, I had not clamped the bottom end of the spinnaker pole into the bracket so that as the boat moved the bottom end of the pole swing out and then swung back in to hit the mast.

Having solved that mystery I walked back down the deck and noticed the sparkling water much like the reflection of a full moon -- except that you will recall that we are living inside of a rain cloud tonight and there is no moon or stars to be seen beneath the thick cloud cover.

As I looked more closely I could see that I was actually watching fish swim in the black night from the bio-luminescence of the water. It was impressive -- arresting. I have seen memorable displays of bio-luminescence before: a friend's black lab swimming in the water at Egmont; the wash off the back of Warrior sailing through the night at 18 or 20 knots. But this was something else again.

Magic! I got Maureen out of bed and we watched the improbable light show together.

ADDENDUM

As a final act to the Light Show, this was the view from Sophrosyne
this morning. Sometimes you just can't make this stuff up!

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Walking to Cape Brett.
As is so often the case in NZ, there is an excellent trail
out to Cape Brett. More up and down
than Maureen would prefer but with outstanding
vistas all along the way.

a

The lighthouse at Cape Brett. Well worth the effort.