Night Sky at Sea

I have wanted to write for some time, about what the sky looks like at night while at sea, but I am afraid my writing skills and vocabulary fail me. I am inadequate to describe the beauty of the real night. I even tried to capture them with my camera, but the moving boat and seas beneath me allow only a black screen or a blurred streak of light.

Rarely, in the country, when local town lights are far enough away, can you see just a glimpse of what the real night sky looks like, and never in an urban area. I think even at sea on an cruise ship which has so much artificial light, or even flying in an airplane (since the windows are only relatively narrow slits looking forward) you are denied a real look of the heavens.

At sea, for me, to view the sky, I must really leave the cockpit, as the bimini cover blocks the view of the sky (as well as shading me from the harsh sun, during the day). I often would lean backwards, while sitting at the helm, and stare up into the heavens, and if there was little cloud cover, I would climb out of the cockpit and go astern or forward, and sit or lay down with my head back and just stare. Horizon to horizon. 360 degrees around me. The Milky Way. Thousands and thousands and thousands of stars shining back at me in a swath of light - both bright pin pricks, clumps of dimmer stars, and cloudy dim swatches of light. I can stare at this for hours. The night sky is so bright, after your eyes are used to it, that I can find storm clouds, which are just places in the sky where the light of the heavens is blotten out. And shooting stars. Boy, can you see them at sea on a clear night. Some nights, I probably counted 4, 5 or 6 easily, and that is early on, before I slept. Not being at all schooled in the heavens, I cannot tell you the name of the star or perhaps planet which seems to creep up from the horizon early each evening. I remember asking Paul, on our trip from Norfolk to St Martin 2 years ago if it was another boat at sea, when the light was close, down at the horizon. The next night, I would ask the same stupid question, and Paul would patiently remind me that it was the same I had seen the night before, before it would rise further and then, later set again. But it was with me again on this past trip, and my heart would pound a bit each night, early in the trip, that I had a neighbor at sea, before realizing that it was my heavenly friend, returned.
Time can be measured by an educated man, since, as the night passes, that star that was low to the horizon, is now overhead, and as the universe passes over head, you are sure IT is moving, and you are standing still.
Early in this trip, the moon was waning, and disappeared, only to return a few nights later, a tiny sliver of light, which eventually, I could find while the sun was just setting. I have seen the full moon so bright that it blots out a lot of the stars from your vision and understand why it has inspired so many men to think of its affect on us, although I think the main one is romance. I am so ignorant of this stuff, and wish I had a basic book aboard about the heavens, the moon's passage and phases, and the planets. Sure, I could look it up on the internet now, but is not the same thing, as reading and watching it live.
But let me say, that, away from the lights of cities (I could see the lights of a town on the south west coast of Puerto Rico from about 60 or 80 miles away, a hazy glow on the horizon, but definitely there, as everything else is so dark, or rather naturally lighted by the moon or brightest stars.) laying back with my face staring up, I enjoyed thinking of the fears and stories that the night sky inspired in the ancients who studied the heavens for secrets, predictions, or logical rules. The wonder it must have produced in the early man. The beauty inspired. Fears conjured. What went through every one's minds just 100 years or so ago, before electric lights were common. A time when all men walked home at night in the dark, when the shadows might be hiding a root to trip you up, or an animal waiting to attack, or a hole to fall into, or a monster to viciously snatch you away. It is easy to allow your fears to come to the front of your thinking, and personally, I often have to push them back into the rear of my mind. But then, looking up and seeing these wondrous heavens above, I forget the fears completely, and stare in awe of God's beauty.