Programs Blog

Thursday, 23 April 2026

Noon Position: 28 degrees North by 64 degrees West

Log (nm): 1356

Weather / Wind / Sail Plan: Sunny with little wind, motor sailing c/o 020 PSC under the four lowers making 6.6 knots

Description of location: Nares Abyssal Plain

My favorite role on the ship so far has been lookout. I think it must be impossible to tire of this horizon where ocean and sky meet, standing at the bow of the ship, where its motion is amplified and the sea tosses up and down ceaselessly. I will try to describe how the ocean and sky appear to me from lookout—I hope to convey the sensation of being in the middle of the endless sea!

            From lookout, the ocean billows towards the edge of the horizon and spills over into the sky. In long slow stretches, the sea swells again and again, like breaths or the quivering of muscles beneath the pelt of some vast languid animal. It is not merely blue but is covered over in shadows and scales made of shining mirrors, or bowls brimming full of the sky, and the crest of each wave is hung with sunlight. I think of all the great invisible worlds beneath the waves cloaked by this inscrutable palpitating surface.

Sometimes, under the pale blue sky burnished by the hot sun, the waves, a deep magnetic blue, look so glassy and smooth and solid that it is with surprise I watch them melting and breaking almost soundlessly upon each other’s backs. The ship sails on and cleaves the swell in a rush of noise, unfurling sudden sheaves of white water from its bows.

            Other days, beneath soft and muffling grey clouds, cold wind sends shadows skating across the waters’ surface and lacing the waves with white foam. Rain clouds creep from the horizon, pale and phantasmal, swallowing the edges of the sea in mist and turning the blue waters ashen. The ocean, heaving in anticipation, becomes a landscape, covered over in hills and valleys, and the ship mounts the white-capped crests, and pauses, poised at the top of each wave so that the vast shining plains of the sea are spread trembling beneath it, the waters seemingly so still and slow as they heap inexorably towards the ship. The wind comes twisting between the hollows of the waves, purring and tumbling against the waters’ surface, and gathers itself against me as I stand between the ceaseless motion of the waves and the rushing faceless wind.

Sometimes, when the light begins to fade from the day, the waves, calm now, take on an iridescence, and the whole ocean becomes an enormous silvery hollow pleated with shadows, the water heavy and leaden and yet weightless as the wave crests toss like the manes of plunging horses. The sun climbs down into dense blue dragon-like clouds as they slink towards the horizon, and the changing light singes the edges of the soft white clouds with gold. The bases of the clouds are dark and indigo and rays of light strike through and play upon the surface of the sea. Full of melodrama, this sunset seems like it must be accompanied by some grand opera, some ringing, reverberating noise, but instead it plays out silently in shapes and shadows and colors. 

Without the moon, the skies are soft with stars. In the distance, sheets of lightning bloom behind ragged plumes of clouds which coil through the sky like ink through water. The dark waters plunge, fathomless and unfathomable, and the ship ploughs up and down in an unsteady percussion between sea and sky, its motion like the strides of a great horse or the wind-tossed branches of a tree. The hull rends the black waves apart and suddenly, like sparks flying from a hot iron struck with a hammer, yellow and green stars of bioluminescence appear, winking in the ship’s wake like tiny fluorescent flowers scattered and sown in black soil.

As I write, a few inches from my head, I hear the great ocean pressing and plunging next to me. The ship balances on the membrane between water and air, between sky and sea, the place where two infinities meet each other and separate again. The ship sails on, parting the waters, which will soon forget our wake.

Ciaran Gavaghan, A watch

Colorful sunset

Stars rising as night falls