The absence of wind makes the forward progress slow. The sea is grey and glassy. At dawn the sunrise show was painted again in the ocean. First pink then orange then the subtle shade of grey yellow sunrise.

All day copies of the clouds in the sky appear on the ocean surface, sometime distorted by the small ripples the boat makes or sometimes by drops of rain. The white cheeked petrels circle the boat. When they tilt their dark wings to turn they almost touch the bird mirrored on the water surface.

With no waves disturbing the surface we can see deep in the water. We are sailing through a sea of plankton including lots of jellyfish. Looking down strings of neon blue lights, rolling transparent lunch rolls with orange filling, brown dots and small dancing white umbrellas float past the side of the boat. We could decorate a Christmas tree with all these creatures. These must be the glowing rods we see at night. Jellyfish are ancient, having been resident on the earth far longer than mammals. Jellyfish are generally under appreciated and hard to study. I try my luck with the plankton net and recover multicolored plankton, blue, green, red and transparent. Several jellies including one who sees all the other creatures as lunch and starts to vacuum them up in the jar on the navstation. My favorite jelly looks like a Christmas ball decorated with lights.

After dinner we slip between two squalls toward the orange glow in the west. The cloud cover makes the night a deep deep black. Hoping for more wind on the other side of the front.