Cruisers' Midnight
30 July 2017
One of the few downsides to cruising in the Tropics is, we find, the 12 hours of darkness.
Coming from higher climes where, in our cruising summer it's still light 'till near 10:00pm or even 10:30pm, light enough to get back from the pub without banging into a tree or walking off the pier, it seems the days are about the right length. They're long enough to get some decent kip, but from 4ish, it's light enough to get the day underway......well, if you're a milkman. The consequence of these early tropical nights in our world is this thing called, "Cruisers' Midnight". Basically, 9pm, it's lights out and everyone's in bed.
3AM........HELLO!!!!!! Wide awake.
Now what? In the words of the song, (name that artiste), "it's three o'clock in the morning", black as pitch and there's probably a balmy 20 knots blowing through the anchorage.
This is where having a Blog and a softly lit iPhone com in. One can happily tap away, woffling on about whatever nonsense is in your head, just enough to put you and probably any readers, back to sleep, thus making it through the long night to 7am, radio Net and the weather.
It's our last day here in the Lau Group. A parting roast lamb dinner tonight with Trev and Jan, our cruising buddies for the last 18 months and then we part, they to stay in Fiji then back home to NZ and us, westwards to the fleshpots of Fji; the north island, Vanua Levu and its metropolis, Savusavu which I'm really hoping is so good they named it twice.