Moonbows and a Quantum Fogbow

Last night I stumbled across a name I have been looking for since a sailing trip a couple of months ago, when I took this photo. I now know that the unusual phenomenon in this picture is called a 'fogbow'. It is similar to a rainbow in many ways, but the fog droplets are so small that instead of light being refracted it is instead diffracted, which leads to a white arc instead of the more familiar colours. Coloured and white bows can occasionally be seen at night, if there are the right atmospheric conditions and a bright moon, but these are given the fair name of 'moonbows'.

Apparently it also has something to do with quantum wavelengths, but that sounds like one for a rainier day than today and it's pretty wet out there as it is.

Cats and Hats

Those who have been on a course will know the strange pleasure that I get from connecting seemingly unrelated things through natural navigation, so here, before your eyes I will attempt to connect a cat on a dustbin and a Greek orthodox priest.

The Gooleys have just returned from a week visiting family in the Peloponnese. My brother's house is high in the Greek hills and we found ourselves following the same route down a few times each day on the way to towns, villages or the beach. It was during these trips in the car that I noticed that certain animals and indeed, in the case of one Greek orthodox priest, people appeared with a soothing predictability at certain points on the journey.

There was a corner that I remembered well for the dustbin which invariably had this cat sitting on it, and the turning to the beach was nearly always to be found a few hundred yards after we saw a priest walking by the road. There is no denying that this is an odd way to view a journey to us in the West, but to the traditional Pacific navigators it would have been comforting and familiar. They included among their many methods of finding their way to the next island, the art of 'pookof', noting which sea creatures appeared with dependable regularity in which locations as they approached land. A school of dolphins a few hours south of one island, a couple of turtles a day east of another.

My long-suffering family even had to endure me saying things like, 'Shall we head towards the priest and then turn towards the pookof cat and go for a swim in the sea?' They must be delighted to be home.

Waves of Confusion

This morning, as our Land Rover rolled onto the Brittany ferry, or MV Bretagne as she likes to be called, I had a cunning plan. I would use the pretence of work to escape the mayhem that was sure to ensue on our return from our summer holiday. While our young boys tried and generally succeeded to convince their mum that two hours of singing clowns and suspect magic were preferable to another game of 'destroy the duty free shop and then pillage the canteen', I would slip out onto the deck with a notepad and pen.

The wind was SSW about force 5. The speed of the ferry meant that the difference between true and apparent wind was stark and varied significantly depending on whether you stood in the slipstream or behind a break of some sort. The waves, however, did not succumb to such vagaries and marched obediently in line towards their destination. They remained a consistent and reliable indicator of direction from the deck I stood on which must have been a good 50ft up. How did I know? Well, there were plenty of obliging yachts around and their sails confirmed it.

I confess I did spend some minutes trying to read a swell pattern, but they were fruitless - this was the English Channel not Tonga after all.

The uniformity of the waves did appear to break as we passed St Catherine's , but not in any useful way, and by the time Portsmouth was in sight the water was, unsurprisingly, a total mess of mixed ripples, waves and swells. Even a Polynesian would have reached for a GPS confronted with that lot. Although the wind was still a constant and so may have been useful on a much slower boat.

The only other thing worthy of note was the clarity of shadows, wind and current, in the lee of an anchored container ship to the east of Bembridge. From the height of the ferry deck the ease with which I could make out the different lines of wind shadow and tidal current, and their overlap, was refreshing. So much clearer than from the deck of a 32ft yacht, although in the smaller boat their effects are so much more apparent.

Our early evening mooring at Portsmouth was delayed for 20 minutes due to 'extraordinary tidal conditions'. Granted there was a bit of springs about them, but nothing else that I could guess at. Maybe they have a list of these expressions to help cope with operational delays without upsetting people. Perhaps tomorrow's passengers will be late due to 'unusual current patterns'?

We were sitting almost patiently next to another Land Rover on the car deck before disembarking, when a voice from inside it asked me where home was.
'Just along the M and then A27 to Chichester.' I replied. They looked confused.
'Sun on the left until I hit a big road then sun in the mirror until I see a cathedral.' I elucidated. They looked worried for me, but smiled and waved us on our way.

Smell Power

Stumbled across a bit of a gem this evening. Marion Owen, 'master gardener', describing the moment she decided to become a gardener at the end of a long passage from Guam to Seattle.

If navigation is about where we are and where we are going, then the senses have a bigger part to play than many realise, and not just physically. Marion's passage about a passage beautifully illustrates that honing our senses can get us to our destination in more ways than one. She found land and a new career.


Here are some excerpts:

'Wall-to-wall ocean, especially in the warm tropics, does something to your senses...

...salt crystals form on the decks and railings--even your skin-- like granules of sugar. With the acrid smell of ocean water and sweat, always sweat, mixed with suntan lotion and more salt air, your nose is dulled with monotony...

Leaning against the metal railing like race horses at the starting gate, we peered at the horizon, straining to see land.

I smelled it hours before I saw it. Green. Chlorophyll. Leaves. Land. The round smell was sweet and full.

The smell of land triggered more than tears of joy. It told me that it was time to take a new road in life; to find a new job. Within a year I'd moved to Kodiak Island and followed a compelling urge to learn everything I could about gardening.'