Waxing Poetic
Over the Puerto Rico Trench
© 2014 Tor Pinney - All Rights Reserved
Ship's Log - March 05,
2014, 0000 hrs.
Lat. 19°17’N x Long. 66°14’W
Midnight and I’ve got the
watch for the next 3 hours. One of my crew is sleeping
belowdecks and the other, just relieved, will be in a minute
or two. The good ketch, Silverheels, sails free under
genoa and single-reefed main, heeling and rolling, creaking
gently, the ENE trade winds a steady 15 knots on her
starboard quarter. The GPS puts her squarely over the Puerto
Rico Trench, an inconceivable five miles of ocean beneath
her keel. Above, ten thousand stars blaze unopposed now that
the crescent moon has set, their constellations like so many
old friends. A favorite, the Southern Cross, rises off the
port quarter, canted low over the alien loom of San Juan,
Puerto Rico where millions of people live under their
millions of electric lights barely 50 miles away, the glow
strangely isolated out here, another world. Out here. We
share our bit of ocean with a lone tanker 25 miles off,
visible only to the AIS, bound for Rotterdam (the readout
tells me) at 12 knots while we ghost at half that speed
towards the Turks & Caicos and southern Bahamas, still
hundreds of nautical miles ahead, our heading marked
precisely by stout Jupiter slung beneath Orion's Belt. For
the next 3 hours all this is all mine. Aye, it's a fine
night to be at sea.
~ end ~
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