Position: 47 degrees, 26 minutes north; 137 degrees, 49 minutes west 123 nm day

Guess what? I had a night watch with a glorious moon and stars sprinkled all over! How I had missed them. I was set for a great watch. The winds had calmed enough to make it pretty comfortable 85% of the time. But when we rolled back and forth just enough the “Tayana River” would produce a new tributary. That is the water that rushes from one side of Charisma to the other through a hole in the cockpit combing. The net effect is that unless you notice the roll at the very start you are going to end up with a wet butt. Wet butt cold body. No bueno.

And then there were those rogue waves that come barreling across the water like a freight train, slam into the side of Charisma and leap up into the cockpit. But they are rogue and don’t happen THAT often. Because of these 15% occurrences I decided to “stand watch” last night. Literally, I stood in the companionway on the stairs and did my 360 lookout from there. If anything looked more interesting I would step out into the cockpit and study it further. Not much happened.

Until it did. And I think I need some research assistance here (JHamm?). At about 12:45 Hawaii time (we don’t change our clocks until we get into port…too confusing) I was standing looking forward when a spotlight lit up from behind. My first thought was that the moon had come out from behind some clouds but I quickly dismissed it when I recalled that the moon had set an hour earlier. I turned to see a light that looked bright enough to be a ship about to run us down directly behind us. LOOK OUT! And then it exploded and fizzled downward to the ocean with a green glow. HOLY MOLY! I was trembling.

What was that? Did any of you see it? Of course we were 600 miles off of the coast so maybe you missed it. No, I did not get visited by a small boat transporting little green people later, nor did Bob on his watch. I turned on the iNavix application on the iPad to see if an AIS signal from a passing ship would show up. Nada. It did not look like the meteors we had seen a week ago. It exploded and fizzled and was green.

I was still pondering this event when I woke Bob at 2 am for his watch. He laughed at my iNavix thought. I babbled non-stop for about 10 minutes…the pent up adrenalin pouring out of me. Poor Bob was still breaking through the sleep haze. Maybe he thinks he dreamed it.

Well, please let me know what research says. It was at 12:45am Hawaii Time at about 48 north latitude, 140 west longitude. Meanwhile it is so very nice to see the stars and moon and today, the sunshine again. It’s like reconnecting with old friends!