Light up my life

When we were tied up in Puerta Vallarta and walking back to the boat at night, there were a couple of stretches of dock where there was an “oily” scum on the water but at night it became a small field of stars with purple/blue dots of light.

Last night after dark (maybe 9pm), I went to the stern of the boat for my ritual pee and was busy looking up at the stars – a very clear night. A sidebar, but for the male portion of the crew, even though we now have water and can use the heads, when it is not crazy bumpy, it is important to continue to pee over the stern rail or downwind side of the boat. This is a “commune with nature moment”.

Anyway, I looked into the black behind us and every 15 to 20 seconds I would see a bright flash of light beneath the surface – almost like someone took a picture. I donned the GoPro and tried to capture this on video, but after reviewing my 20 minutes of blackness this morning, have decided it was a failed attempt. Again my appreciation of wildlife photographers continues to grow.

So this morning I resorted to Google (and my daughter Devan) to try and decide what I saw. For Puerta Vallarta, is seems to be Noctiluca scintillans, also known as sea sparkle. One of the articles described this type of plankton visually as brown scum so it seems to fit the bill. The one last night is harder to sort as the plankton version sounds like it is more “coastal”, and we are definitely not coastal at the moment. When you dig into what else does this, it is everywhere in the oceans! It can be used to try and frighten away a predator, to attract a mate, bait to lure in breakfast or lots of other purposes.

So I am going with the theory some jellyfish thought Turtlebones was the queen jellyfish and they were flashing in the hopes of getting lucky. Devan also suggested it could have been Atlantis trying to strike up a conversation which I think has merit.

Of course Devan went on to get a degree in Marine Biology, whereas I need to fall back to some of the educational marine shows/cartoons we watched together when she was younger. I am excited about the prospect of a grandkid to give me another excuse to go back to these shows.

Moving on, or trying to, we are now officially in the doldrums. Winds were light most of the night with 10nm to 15nm travelled every 3 hours. About 5am we were officially becalmed and bobbing at 1 knot.

Bill is now up and we discussed getting the dingy and going to see if we could recover the gold beneath the rainbow as it looked like the water was illuminated. We decided that in 13,000 feet of water we would likely be unsuccessful, so we keep inching forward.

The forecasts say today will be the lightest winds of the entire passage and they will start to pick up again tomorrow. We are 187nm from the equator and 795nm to Hiva Oa. We have currently travelled 2,223 nautical miles.

For those of you who do not go to the Turtlecones.ca site and check our position, our line of breadcrumbs across the Pacific is looking “significant”. In 5 days we will be at Hiva Oa and a new stage of the adventure!