There’s something in the air…

We’ve been in the right place at the right time in recent weeks. And, as you know, on a boat you do tend to look up a lot at the sky to see what’s going on with the weather.

A few days ago, while at anchor, the light was dull and the sun trying to break through the clouds. We took the opportunity of slightly less boiling temperatures to go ashore to shop and do some chores. When we got back to SY Esper, we saw the amazing sun halo featured at the top of this post. We’ve only ever seen one before, which was from a white-sand beach in the Mentawais a couple of months ago…

Sun halos (and moon halos) are created by light refracting through tiny crystals of frozen rain high in the atmosphere. They are more common than you might expect and happen all over the world.

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In a recent two day sail across the South China Sea, Liz took over the watch from Jamie under a moonlit sky. The light was so bright it flooded the cockpit and was good enough to read by. An hour later it became duller as clouds began to block the moon. But it didn’t seem to change. So Liz took out the binoculars to check why the clouds weren’t moving and discovered there was only half a moon. Had we slipped through a time tunnel? Maybe this was some kind of Twilight Zone where followtheboat was doomed to sail forever at night?

Liz was a little freaked out by it, and kept an eye on the moon as it gradually became a crescent. Then it stopped. And by 07:00, as the sun came up, the moon was whole again. It wasn’t till we arrived back in the land of internet that we discovered we’d probably had one of the clearest views in the world of the partial lunar eclipse on 16th – 17th June 2019. 😃

Don’t forget to keep looking up, you never know what you might see…

Have you ever seen something rare or exceptional in the sky from a boat? Let us know in the comments.
Peace and fair winds!
Liz, Jamie and Millie xxx

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