Hove-to, Holidaze, UFOs Past and Present

5 days.  It's only been 5 days.

We left that little port outside of San Diego 6 days ago and steamed west for 300 miles, then turned the ignition to "off" and started drifting to wherever the waves and winds dictate.

To a watchstanders such as myself, however, that means it's been 10 sleeps, not 5 days.  

Time slows down.  The circadian rhythm gets tossed out the window.  I have my short sleep in the afternoon, and my long sleep in the morning like a crepuscular animal whose life-cycle follows a semi-diernal tide.

I saw a large pod of spinner dolphin on the way out to the waters where we're now drifting. They made directly for the bow of the ship where, if the past is any indicator, they played in the bow waves but were completely out of sight from my lofty seat up on the bridge.  

I did not see their departure.

The green glow lit the waves during the transit out here, too, and the white horses were clearly visible in the long eyes all the way to the horizon in the impenetrable night.

I watched the international space station pass overhead, from right to left, and then I saw other lights in the sky that didn't make any sense.

I watched them manoeuver in weird circles, then disappear for awhile before reappearing nearby.  They were amber in color.  They were far away.  They were fast.

I finally pointed them out to my watch partner.

We heard one side of a radio communication where a shoreside facility was asking another vessel if they saw any signaling lights, that they were getting reports of flares reported in that area, but because that vessel was too far away we never heard their response.

But I've seen flares on numerous occasions, and those were not flares.

I didn't see them again until last night, 5 nights into our drift.  The deck cadet was up on the bridge bored and lamenting missing out on celebrating New Year's Eve but the light show was brief.  I had just managed to dial in my binoculars from where the previous watch had ganked with the eyepieces before they disappeared, not to return.

Again- not flares.  Not even close.

We've been drifting for 5 days.  Only 5 days.  

We have 14 more to go... 28 sleeps until Tacoma.

I told my watch partner about a 4x8 watch I stood with the Chief Mate on the APL President Polk in 2013, when we saw an unidentified and unexplainable light we presumed at first to be Venus rising and then the ISS in flight.  We were in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, 1000 miles from the nearest land.  We were pretty sure it was either extremely high altitude or suborbital.

Then, this object performed a smooth, 90-degree port turn and went behind a cloud, something no satellite, weather balloon, or space station could do.

That CM refused to acknowledge what we'd both just seen. One minute we were puzzling through what it might be, then it defied physics; the next minute, the CM was gaslighting himself about what we saw and refused to talk about it.

I persisted the remainder of that voyage to get him to admit what we saw, but without success. I'm convinced that's why he started playing Pentecostal "rock" on watch every morning after that, much to my horror and chagrin.  

28 sleeps.  

The weather has been flat, warm, and mostly sunny, but that's about to change for the worse.  A north wind is coming and with it will come the ocean swells, wind waves, rain, cold, and an end to the calm, flat conditions.

Our mild drift southward will become more pronounced.  Rest will suffer.  Work will become even moreso.  

The only thing that will be the same will be the slow passing of the next 28 sleeps, and I am about to enjoy one of those right now, so on watch tonight, when I'm looking for the lights in the sky, I will be saying to myself "27 sleeps..."