Day 15, concluded

After my visit from Leviathan, the Scapegrace continued to sail herself while the sun sank and set, and a bright clear moonless night -- did what?

"Ensued"? That's terrible. You can't say "night dawned." Why not? Why isn't there some equivalent? "Night sunsetted". Nope. No good.

You can say "night fell." But that doesn't feel right. I want to say something like "night rose".

Anyway, whatever it did, there it was, after a bit, bright clear and moonless, as I may have mentioned. You could see the Milky Way plain as anything -- an increasingly rare experience. But depressingly, the lights of Portland and its environs washed out almost the entire northwestern quadrant of the sky -- even miles out at sea, as the Scapegrace and I were, too far to see any land at all.

About 9 PM the wind fell and a following sea came up, so the boat would no longer steer herself. I steered by hand for a while, but by 1 AM I was tired, so I hove-to and went into the cabin and slept.

I woke up every hour or so and popped by head abovedecks just to be sure there was no shipping about. But I might as well not have bothered. I had the Gulf of Maine to myself -- me, and the streetlights of Portland.