Travel Reference
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had what was left of the corn bread. I was quite shocked to see how our food supply was
diminishing.
The next day was another windless one; the evening presented a spectacular full moon rise,
dripping honey drops out of the yellow ocean away in the east. The clouds had burnt off
during the day, save a few artistic, blackened blobs, and the heat was back. There was a lot
of phosphorescence in the water. Déjà vu rested on a painted ocean, her skirts down around
her ankles, mast and rigging naked to the world and proud of it. Who would tell?
“Yes, I'll have another rum and tang, kip,” I said, handing Gavin my glass.
I was preparing a dinner of sorts when Gavin suddenly yelled out, “Hey, I'm not sure, but
I could swear I am seeing a UFO!”
“That's all the rum for you,” I said climbing up the companionway steps. “Where is this
UFO then?”
I searched around the night sky and saw immediately what he was pointing at. To the
north of us, just above the horizon there was a multicolored light. There were prism colors:
purple, orange, green, red, and yellow, spangling and twinkling and blinking. It was beau-
tiful to watch. I suspected it was a planet like Jupiter or Venus rising and said as much.
“I don't know. I've been watching it for some time, and it hasn't moved,” said Gavin, not
wanting to part with his UFO theory just yet.
I went back to cooking dinner; time will tell, I thought. Fifteen minutes later we were eating
dinner in the cockpit and the “light” had not moved a degree, yet other stars I had seen
earlier had moved in relation to this spangling, colorful light. “Well, I'll be damned! What
the hell is that? It's not a boat light I don't think. Boat lights don't break up prismatically
like that? Unless they are shining several colored lights together, and that hardly seems
likely.”
The light continued to provoke us for a couple of hours, and then I went below to catch
forty winks. It had disappeared when I took over the watch. To this day, we do not know
what it was. It was Gavin's UFO. This old world is still a mysterious place, fortunately.
We are facing up to the fact that our food supply is becoming a worry. We are losing weight
and are feeling weak. How long will this trip last? Awoke to another day of calm and swel-
tering hot weather. Sea birds are dotted around the flat blue ocean, sitting still as though
painted on a canvass. The trash bag we threw out last night has over taken us. Serves us
right!
We have seven hundred miles to go. Our position today is 142 degrees west, 20 degrees
north. We are well out of any doldrums or equatorial calms. We lethargically start the day
