The robot  boat driver fixed, and the forestay repaired that had come loose mysteriously on the passage from St. Martin to St. Thomas had been repaired. The forestay tensioner was swinging around the mast, like a mace from hell, and it had caught Joy on the thigh before finally being brought under control. It could have killed her if it had hit her in the head, but the really weird part is that it had been clearly missing a bushing and this is what led to its failure and coming loose. More sabotage? Who knows, but now everything had been repaired that had become an issue on the way to St. Thomas. The only remaining issue was the Honda outboard motor on our dingy had a propeller issue- it would slip if we tried to move at a pace more than an idle. There were no Honda dealers in St. Thomas, so we decided to leave asap. We had over a thousand nautical miles to go to get to Panama and the canal.

For six nights and five days we swapped the watch. We were surprised to see almost nothing. A cruise ship left St. Thomas thirty minutes after we did, and an hour or so after dark it's glow on the horizon became faint and then disappeared. Puerto Rico was over fifty miles away but provided a glow on our starboard side all night. After that, at night, the only thing you could see was the depths of the Milky Way, meteors, and the unending immense sea of black. To not be humbled would not be human. 

So it went for the entire time. No contrails, No Planes, no ships. It would not be until we got within 75 miles of Venezuela that we saw a couple of oil platforms afar that would confirm that people existed at all.

One thing I did enjoy was the observance of flying fish. These creatures really do fly- for a real distance. The larger ones I observed to be about 8-10 inches long, and could stay out of the water for 10 seconds and cover a quarter mile of sea, actually flying up over a wave, then descending the valley then   climb again to miss the next wave. It was really beautiful to watch as many as a dozen launch at the same time in formation. It seemed they thought the boat was going to eat them. At dawn there was always a few trapped on our trampolines or caught on deck. Their size and unknown origination point made filming them almost impossible. Here is a close up of their wing / fins that provides the lift necessary for flight.