It was a very dark night watch.
2:30 in the morning, a tiny little moon, a handful of stars, Shakira singing on repeat, not a ship in sight, the timer set for 15 minutes (just in case I fell asleep before looking around again), and not much to do but sit and stare and watch the ocean slowly go by.
At least, not much to do until I glanced over the side of the boat and saw a GIANT GLOWING ORB.
I know this sound a little crazy — in fact, that’s exactly what I thought when friends of ours first mentioned that they’d been seeing giant glowing orbs at night — but that’s exactly what I saw.
I stood up in the cockpit, holding on to the dodger and hyperventilating as this enormous circle of solid glowing water slowly slipped past the boat. I couldn’t decide if I should scream for Jon, pass out, or find a camera… so I opted to just keep watching.
And as I watched, I swear to you, this giant glowing orb started. to. move. Just a little, just a bit, just enough to convince me that it was definitely something alive (and not a rock, or floating container, or whatever other horrible evils the night-time sleep-deprived brain can come up with).
We’ve got lots of guesses — some sort of current upswelling? A school of very small fish all swimming very quickly in a tight circle? A sleeping whale? (Sleeping whale is the popular vote at the moment — which is reeeeally scary given we passed, hmmm, about 10′ away from the thing). But your guesses would be much appreciated 🙂
In the meantime, I think I’m going to stop reading Michael Crichtons for a while 😉
Took a trip and never left the farm………..