Night Watch

Day 7-8, 25N 27W (still no wind)
The night is dead calm and alive with twinkling stars. They do actually shimmer and twinkle. I wonder why, and how (I know so little). Some come right down to where the sea must start (the horizon is not discernable). Occasionally I think we have company and just then even I shone the torch at one to check it wasn't another boat suprising us 20 metres off. But no, simply a star rising. Ah, the tricks the night can play. We are most totally alone out here in this vast expanse of windlessness. For days we have nursed Impulse through the calm. Coaxing her on. Feeding her limp sails sipfulls of breeze, here and there. She hobbles on through, brave little boat of ours! Wow. So many stars! And what I thought was the Milky Way is but a breath of cloud hanging low. The sky is brighter than the sea although I cannot tell where one ends and the other begins. It must be the stars lightening the sky because the moon set some time ago like a pithless segment of orange held up to a flame.
Later I sit up forward. Phosphorescence tinkles from each bow. The oily ocean is freckled with lights - stars doubled up and more phosphorescence. The Milky Way is clear now, behind that sooty cirrus. I have a strange feeling of disorientation. Where are we headed again? Oh yes. Wherever we can find wind to fill our boots. For a yawning moment there is no North or South to my compass. I am outside myself, time and the linear boudaries of space. Then, ahead, I make out the Big Dipper. That's a demented angle you're lying at son. I think of a shopping trolley falling from a bridge. My mind rattles on, in dialogue with the night. A shooting star scratches the sky. What, I wonder, would it be like to voyage without destination - ever? Another streak of light at the corner of my eye. We are 500 miles from any landfall and going nowhere fast. I have an immesurable sense of space and I am happy beyond belief.