#969 Watching the sunrise/sunset day after day
Posted by Tall Ships America on October 7, 2011
Every day, without fail, the sun rises and the sun sets. You can practically set your watch to it. And yet, every day, I miss at least one, sometimes both, of these solar events. Sun rise because I stay huddled under the covers until the last possible moment, and the sunset because I live in a city and there are usually buildings in the way. I can see the clouds change color but generally miss seeing the sun finally sink below the horizon and the stars come out. Also, taking the time to sit and watch the day begin and end, unfortunately, only happens when I schedule the time in. Sad.
But on a ship, you have nothing but time and no tall buildings to get in the way of watching the sun do it’s thing. The 4-8 watch is usually pretty popular because you get to watch both sunrise and sunset. You take the deck in pitch black and over the course of four hours, watch the sky turn from a deep purple to pinks until the rays reach over the horizon and the sun starts to rise. By the time you go to bed, it’s full on daylight.
Later that day, you watch the sky take on fiery reds and oranges as the sun sets, muted pinks give way to twilight and stars start to twinkle until, surprisingly quickly, it’s night. So much change in such a relatively small amount of time. And you get to watch it happen every day. Awesome.
Thanks, J, for the idea!
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