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mum and brad went for a night dive last night and i decided to go out on the boat with them. as they jumped into the water with the dive master, and darkness took over, and the dive master's two young boy assistants jumped into the water to snorkel, i started to regret it slightly. the night sky was a gorgeous spread - i could hardly believe in the milky way, i swore it was clouds until i admitted it hadn't moved - but an hour and a half of solo stargazing (with a warm body beside me, it would have been whole-ly fab), despite the fact that getting pitched by the waves, and the noise of the reef, were all very beautiful, seemed a bit on the longish side.

Lightning storm at sea

Morgan Lockhart
2006-04-29 13:48:07

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mum and brad went for a night dive last night and i decided to go out on the boat with them. as they jumped into the water with the dive master, and darkness took over, and the dive master's two young boy assistants jumped into the water to snorkel, i started to regret it slightly. the night sky was a gorgeous spread - i could hardly believe in the milky way, i swore it was clouds until i admitted it hadn't moved - but an hour and a half of solo stargazing (with a warm body beside me, it would have been whole-ly fab), despite the fact that getting pitched by the waves, and the noise of the reef, were all very beautiful, seemed a bit on the longish side.

but about fifteen minutes into it, the boys climbed back into the boat. the currents were too strong. the winds were picking up. they began trying to put up the tarp, and i tried to help as well, but the best we could do was make a clumsy fort. they treated me quite a bit like a gringa, checking to make sure i wasn't seasick, telling me to get under the tarp because rain was coming, but i resolved to stay out because the light show was spectacular.

we weren't very far off shore, less than fifteen minutes, and the island was framed in intermittent bolts of lightning that lit up pink stretches of cloud down the entire length. in the opposite direction, far out to sea, the entire horizon was being hit with sheet lightning. as time passed, our surroundings even flashed with the white of it. if that's not enough, there was also sheet lightning to the right and the left, though it was much less frequent that the bolts in front of us and the sheets behind us. i can't say i wasn't nervous - i was, because boats are natural lightning rods. i think i spooked the boys asking them if it was possible to swim to shore - or would the currents carry us away? -- no, they assured me, they'd help, carrying us toward shore. that definetly eased my mind. but when it got closer and closer to the end of the dive, i was ready for them to come up. our own patch of sky was still clear, but the lightning was going off almost at
all times by that point. and thunder was booming.

oddly enough, the storm never hit the island. we've had storms the last few days at night, but not last night, just all around us.

brad and i went with lyrical to the most fun, well, looking bar i've ever seen. a reggae bar called i&i that was built like a bunch of interconnected treehouses with swings and hammocks everywhere and even a knotted rope leading up to a bed in a loft. it could have looked like a disney ride but it didn't. there weren't a lot of people, probably around 30 at the peak, but as we actually socialized with others, it was still fun. i can take lyrical, enjoy him even, when surrounded by a lot of other people. though his baked-out-rasta ramblings can get on my nerves sometimes when its just the four of us. we met another interesting island man - johanne sabastian - who was from jamaica but acted more american than any of the others. completely insane, drunk american, but still. he was fun. "i can't believe i sold the last bit of weed on the island for this rum and coke!" a guy from seattle, accompanied by a girl who couldn't possibly have been his girlfriend because she was flirting so heavily with these italians (she was so drunk american girl in the tropics), was wearing a light on a headband (like a splunker might have) and no one could get him to explain why he had it. "why don't you have one?" he merely retorted. definetly an interesting crowd.