Note from the Sea: Musicians in the Night

July 30, 2015

Latitude 31d, 28' 27" N

Longitude 154d, 24' 04" W

It's 1:30 am and I just came on watch. I have trained myself to go to sleep at 7 pm so that I will be rested by the time I start watch at 1 am.  There is a full moon and the seas are fairly calm.  Gentle winds and low swells are coming against us but they are spaced far apart and there is no slapping or pounding as there was coming back to the Marquesas from the Tuamotus.  When dawn arrives, we will have been at sea for five days on this passage, making a little over 150 miles a day, which is good speed for us, or an average of about 6.3 kts. (7.25 mph).  Try driving down the street at that speed to get a feel for it, then imagine taking a coast to coast trip and sometimes speeding up to 7 and 1/4 mph on a 20 degree bouncing tilt, and you have sailing the North Pacific.  Winds are predicted to drop in a day or two and we will travel about 600 miles through a high pressure area where we will be lucky to make 4 kts.

We have been passing through an area that the charts call the Musicians Seamounts which are under water spires of about 9000 feet named after musicians.  Below us, we have the classics and romantics, as well as some modern ones.  There are mounts named after Prokofiev, Rachmaninov, Schubert, Shostakovich, Ravel, Debussy, and Strauss well as Berlin and Hammerstein, about 35 mounts in all, continuing the SE to NW directional pattern of all the Pacific island chains.  Of course, all of this is about 7500 feet below us.  I can imagine some ocean cartographer naming them after his favorites.  I would have added Gershwin.

The full moon is darting amid wisping clouds and the night is quiet.  I will play music in my head to accompany the night's beauty.