Night Watches

At sea, there is no place to stop. No rest stops, no hotels, no dirt road to pull onto and wait till morning. When the sun sets, we keep on sailing. There is always someone on. At 2:45 am, my alarm goes off. It’s time for my 3-6 shift. I look up and see my wife at the helm, eager for her break. I turn on the red headlamp and search for my jacket and PFD. I fill my pockets with all I need: headphones, cookies, a Kindle, and my phone. At 2:55, I report for duty. The change is mechanical and efficient: wind speed, wind angle, heading, islands and reefs, boats, storms, sea state. She leaves the helm for the comfort of the saloon couch. I sit and stare at the red-lit instrument panel, still too sleepy to make sense of it. Slowly, I settle. I watch the radar and see nothing. I check the wind angle and speed, and tweak the jib trim for no reason at all. Habits. Without the moon, there is nothing out there. Just darkness. Maybe the white caps of the waves when they break on our beam. Maybe a bird flies by close enough to startle me. Mostly, it’s emptiness until I look up and see a million stars. I’m equally awestruck and terrified. Each one reminding me of the insignificance of it all. And then the wind picks up. I reef the sails and put the hood of my jacket on. Chaos everywhere. Wind humming, rig grunting, fiberglass creaking, waves crashing. I hold on to the side of the seat as the boat climbs and falls through the building swell. Soon after, fear gives way to acceptance, and on a good day, excitement. On those days, I put the headphones on and press play. The music drowns out the chaos. A voice sings about small towns and little sun. The noise disappears. It feels magical, a calmness divorced from the chaos around me. The boat rises above the wave. It accelerates at the crest. I brace for the drop, but it never comes. We keep going, faster and faster, surfing on its crest. We are gliding, flying, like a foiling dinghy on a lake. But we are no dinghy. We are a house riding the waves of the Pacific.

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• This micro story is part of Passage Life, a collection of brief reflections and descriptions of life in the open ocean.

About Me

I’m Nestor Lopez-Duran, writing under the pen name N.L. Duran. I am a former psychology professor now sailing around the world with my wife on our sailboat named Blue Buddha. The stories published in Currents & Wind are inspired by the people, places, creatures, and events I encounter at sea.