Matthias, Luisa and Marco, on the German Sea Pearl, have been using an ap to learn the night skies. My guides have been a British guide to the stars and planet purchased at the drug store in ST George Bermuda, a southern hemisphere star chart and my iPhone camera. The British book is very proper, assumes you have a telescope and goes in depth to each star, planet ad constellation. The retro star chart, one of the treasures in the box shipped to the Galapagos, is two pieces of plastic with the stars on one and a window on the other. Spinning the window to time and day allows you to hold it up to the horizon and match the stars. The edges and on the back is packed with useful tidbits. The constellations here are hidden in a mass of points of lights that look like someone went crazy with the stars for good school work. The phone helps with this using the camera that stacks images for three seconds. Over these three second it begs me to hold still. It routinely forgives me for being on a rolling boat. When I point it at the stars without anything on the boat, it captures the brightest stars, and forgets the rolling boat

Slowly I have begun to recognize the arrangement of bits of light shapes. I started to give them tags to remember like the morning triangle, a distinct feature of my morning water in the north. Two nights ago, I decided I needed to own the skies by making my own stories of the patterns. As I learned my way around with my tales I could then connect the stars to the refined information in the British book and the Latin words on the start chart. I started this morning looking north. To the west is Beryl, our daughter, climbing on an impressive wall in Africa, a set of five stars outline her body dangling from a crag by one hand. To the right is her fiancé, Elydah the photographer. The morning triangle becomes her crouched figure peering through the camera lens at Beryl climbing. Above Elydah is an arch of bright stars I capture again and again with the camera. The arch with two lines pointing up are Justin and Danielle on the water perhaps on Lake Champlain paddle boarding with three dogs, or racing a sailboat. To the right is a giant star fish, Orion with his new fish belt and the Red Eye of the Bull Taurus. With this narrative the stars pop. I can connect them to the charts. Elydah is also known part of Cetus, the whale. Justin and Danielle are the Phoenix. Beryl is Pieces and Grus. As many generations and many cultures before me by turning the skies into a familiar narrative I begin to make be able to remember it. Not sure I have it right but I can recognize Deneb, the tail of the whale and Elydah's camera. Menkar the end of the starfish and the whale head. And of course Betelgeuse the brightest arm of Orion.

Today my great surprize the bright pinpoints of starlight persisted as the pre-dawn twilight arrived. The clear air here, makes the drama of the actual monochromatic a little sunrise dull, but in the clear air Orion and friends remain dancing in the sky as the sky turns orange, pink, purple and blue. Takes my breath away to see stars on an orange then purple background.

As we draw closer to the Marquesas, we have started our own map of the islands, places like Ua Oa and Fatu Hiva. The guides are mostly narrative and difficult to understand. A map is needed, so far, our pencil sketch map has annotations for waterfall, hikes, archeologic sites, towns and anchorages. As we draw it, we will begin to build our story decoding the landscapes of the volcanic islands ahead.

Two fishing boats, two mature masked boobies and a frigate bird appear today. The fishing boats look international and the birds may be following them. The birds may not be signs of land. The Masked booby circled several times as if checking us out for a possible landing. I wonder if we smell like booby. I did not play booby calls for these birds and they leave.