A moonlight bay and my Ariel in October 2003 in the photo below… Moonlight is indeed magic at sea, but so also is the Milky Way on a moonless night when you are far enough out at sea to be beyond the influence of coastal lights, and the bioluminescence in your wake mirrors the thin trail of the galaxy overhead.
On one such night I was lying on my back on a cockpit seat a few miles offshore in Monterey Bay. I was steering by the Milky Way, when suddenly what appeared to be an airplane-sized bird appeared directly overhead. The huge black form obscured half the galaxy. It might as well have been a pterodactyl for the impact that sight had on me. I sat upwards abruptly to regain my bearings. The bird was a brown pelican with a wingspread of five feet or so, but while I was lying back in the cockpit with little to reference for perspective that bird appeared to be immense.
On another moonless night, I tied the tiller and let Augustine sail herself while I went forward to watch luminescent sea life appear in hazy green silhouette below me: Small and large fish darting ahead of my bow, and at one point, a ray with spread wings. Then, a sea lion chasing a school of agitated fish. The fish going off like a fan of bottle rockets, each rocket on its own course, and the sea lion twisting its body in fluid motion with green wings trailing from its front flippers as it pursued the fish.
And on yet another moonless night, I was returning to Santa Cruz in strong wind and heavy seas. It was pitch black out with the exception of distant low lights of shore. I could not see the swells coming as they took me on the beam. It was unnerving to feel the boat heel suddenly as we dropped over a crest into a trough that I could not see.
When I am sailing alone at night I like to light my brass yacht lamp that I hang over the closet. On rough nights the bottom of the lamp is restrained by a plastic cup holder that I Velcro an inch or so beneath the lamp. The lamp burns softly in the main salon with the pleasant smell of liquid candle wax. Whether it is my imagination or actual heat generated bythe lamp, the cabin feels warm when that lamp is burning and I go below. The light alone warms me even as I sit at the tiller, just bythe vry sight of it. Yes, night sailing is magical.
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