We are beginning to see birds and ships again. After days of no other boats, we saw one yesterday morning. Lars had a quick chat on the vhf with them, then today, we had the second encounter of the trip with a huge ship coming close enough to read the name on with NO AIS! A more than a bit disconcerting! Now I’ve come up for my first night watch and there is a ship showing up on AIS. While I was scanning the horizon to see it it’s visible yet to the eye, a most extraordinary thing happened! A light appeared high in the northwest sky, skipped across in a dipping pattern and plunged into the ocean! Now meteorites, aka “shooting stars”, are a common enough occurrence in the night sky at sea, but this was unusual in that first of all it is a very bright, almost full moon stealing the stage night, with barely any stars visible. This is compounded by a thin horizontal layer of stratus clouds covering most of the sky, making a reflective ceiling on a sky that normally seems limitless. The moon shines through this with a perfect moon bow around it, (cool enough in itself!), but this white hot object fell so close that I saw it in front of the cloud layer! What an auspicious start to my watch! Maybe it’s an alien craft coming to earth!? Haha fanciful concept. I imagine if I were an alien coming to earth, the sea would make an excellent landing zone. Plenty of wide open space, not much to hit, no media, no immediate military presence...hmmmm. I can see the makings of a great sci fi story in that idea. The cargo ship’s name is “Winning ace”. Ha! Whoever named it is gambling that they have a winning hand in shipping. Too funny. Cargo ship names are often very incongruous, and I ponder who comes up with these names?
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