Oh Capt...you have no idea.
When my "almost daughter" went to sea four years ago from USMMA, I told her she needed to ask the captain for a special request. Out in the middle of the Atlantic, she had to ask him if he'd "darken ship" for her. She looked at me as if I was nuts. But she said "Sure, I'll do it."
I will NEVER forget the email I received from her. The captain heard her request, asked where it came from, and then told her to head to the flying bridge. He then "darkened ship." He left her for 10 minutes...then turned everything back on. He then let her use the sat system to email me.
The first line says "Colonel Steve...the captain granted my request...OMG!!!!"
For those that have "been there and done that" you can guess the rest of the message.
There's something soothing about the gentle swell at sea....the green flash, the amazing night sky...it's like that in-flight too...but on the sea...
Yeah, I have the salt in me.
Steve
USAFA ALO
USAFA '83
You mentioned many of the things I put in that green flash photo post. The sea either calls to you or it doesn’t. An opportunity to see the entire night sky, horizon to horizon in every direction, with no light pollution, no land in sight - priceless.
Just for the sea-lovers here:
THE SEA
THE SEA! the sea! the open sea!
The blue, the fresh, the ever free!
Without a mark, without a bound,
It runneth the earth’s wide regions round;
It plays with the clouds; it mocks the skies;
Or like a cradled creature lies.
I ’m on the sea! I ’m on the sea!
I am where I would ever be;
With the blue above, and the blue below,
And silence wheresoe’er I go;
If a storm should come and awake the deep,
What matter? I shall ride and sleep.
I love, O, how I love to ride
On the fierce, foaming, bursting tide,
When every mad wave drowns the moon
Or whistles aloft his tempest tune,
And tells how goeth the world below,
And why the sou’west blasts do blow.
I never was on the dull, tame shore,
But I lov’d the great sea more and more,
And backwards flew to her billowy breast,
Like a bird that seeketh its mother’s nest;
And a mother she was, and is, to me;
For I was born on the open sea!
The waves were white, and red the morn,
In the noisy hour when I was born;
And the whale it whistled, the porpoise roll’d,
And the dolphins bared their backs of gold;
And never was heard such an outcry wild
As welcom’d to life the ocean-child!
I ’ve liv’d since then, in calm and strife,
Full fifty summers, a sailor’s life,
With wealth to spend and a power to range,
But never have sought nor sighed for change;
And Death, whenever he comes to me,
Shall come on the wild, unbounded sea!
by Barry Cornwall