It’s shortly after 0400, the time I started my second night watch duty. Log book is written and I’m sitting on the cockpit.

The half-moon is shining through scattered smaller high up altocumulus clouds looking like cotton-wool balls scattered on the nightly sky.

Suddenly they got blown away. Larger clouds, with cirrus like streaks are now to be seen but they dissolve quickly as well. The cloud-field disappears almost completely above MaRe. In the distance of the horizon there are the typical cumulus and cumulus- nimbus clouds hanging at the sky.

The half-moon and a few bright stars are to be seen. Light-pollution by nature, the moon doesn’t allow to see the full night sky.

I’m wearing my wind breaker because we have the wind from 90 – 120 deg STB. And this wind blows fully through the cockpit. This would be a bit chilly on the skin.

As we are now between Erromango and Efata islands, the easterly swell rolls onto MaRe. It’s with about 50 m between two waves, too short for comfortable sailing. It bangs often onto MaRe’s tunnel between her gums. Additionally there is a southeastern swell, which must have its origin far down in the southern pacific. These two wave systems make MaRe rocking.

In the meantime it’s dawn. The sun still behind the horizon but the night disappears and with it, the moon river which illuminated the sea in front of MaRe. With such an illumination, I didn’t need to use radar to see what’s in front of me.

Now it got a bit cool. My right arm feels cold inside the wind breaker. I want to drink a cup of tea and a have few slices of the bread I baked during my first watch. Freshly baked bread with butter and marmalade combined with hot cup of tea.

Now a look back.

During the last two days I was busy with a special task. Making a wedding greetings video for friends. My idea was to take a few pictures of my looong voyage and combine it with the actual greeting video. It required an non-linear video editor, an application, I never used before. I used “kdenlive” a pretty powerful tool, which I just could install from the Linux Mint repository.

At the end I got a video with pictures transiting with fade out and fade in and a BGM. Two days of work, but a satisfying one. I hope the two will like it.