Position: 36 degrees, 11 minutes north; 157 degrees, 40 minutes west 140 nm day – (we’re about the latitude of Santa Barbara)

Yipee! What a night we had last night. No furling, no squalls and most importantly… no lightning! Just stars and a few high clouds.

As the sun set on a beautiful, clear afternoon of 360 degrees of blue we noticed that the horizon was becoming congested with clouds.

Beautiful, but also scary. These are the ones that turn into lightning storms at night.

South of the equator and on our passage north to Tahiti this was just a sunset phenomenon. The clouds would arrive at sunset and dissipate by early evening leaving clear night skies. Not on this leg. Clouds on the sunset horizon have been there to stay and taunt us all night.

So last night after our sunset dinner Bob and I went down below. Bob to write the blog, me to do the dishes and prepare for my night watch. I stopped and glanced up at the “first star I see tonight” and made a wish…please no lightning tonight. I said a quick prayer to the Maker of the glorious stars and went below.

A half hour later when I came up to settle in for my watch I looked up and gasped! Bob, come look! 360 degrees of stars, stars, and more stars! My Big Dipper gleefully waved to me from the northern skies. It was a glorious night! The only clouds that drifted over were fluffy things, not scary carriers of lightning. The evenings are beginning to cool enough to need an additional layer of clothing. I grabbed a blanket around 11 pm and snuggled down on my back for perfect viewing of the last few meteors and many, many stars. Oh what a night!

Even Charisma seemed to dance with joy on the waves. We were skipping along between 6 and 7 knots all night. It got a little boisterous at times but we kept the jib out and made great mileage dancing under the starlit sky…no moon, just stars. The new moon comes out tonight.

I had followed the blogs of several boats that did this passage a few weeks before us. They spoke of squally weather but no one mentioned the lightning. Orcinius is about 200 miles ahead of us and a bit further east and they have hardly seen lightning. It is fascinating to watch. When it is up high above the clouds it really does look like a pinball game. When it drops lower it looks like water balloons setting off other explosions. It is a humbling experience to be gliding under all of this electric activity. Lots of prayers and good Charisma mana and of course, Angels on our sails are protecting the good ship, Charisma.

Today has been a beautiful day of sailing too. Minus a 15 mile wide squall that suddenly bore down on us around 11 am. The fun was over. Bob helped me furl the jib to slow down, let it go in front of us, and went back to bed. An hour later our evasive maneuver proved successful! The squall had slid by in front of us. Yay!

And just now at 5 pm, Bob called to have me come see a full rainbow arching over the ocean. I hope it is a good sign!

Lotta squalls means a lotta rainbows.