The nightwatch with all kinds of extraordinary events

Ship: Regina Maris
Date: 23rd of February 2025
Position: North Atlantic Ocean
Geographical Position: 27°48.397’N 078°35.333’W
Etmal: 160 nm
Total: 8,207 nm

Today’s daily report is all about the ever-popular nightwatch and the special, sometimes strange, events that have already been observed. Every night at 00:30, the members of the Alpha-1 Watch – currently Jana, Timo, Benji, Sasa, Nico and myself – are woken up to steer, make logbook entries, and keep a lookout until 05:00.

Funnily enough, special or inexplicable things often happen at night.

UFO Attack

Shortly before the nightwatch during Charlie-2, several large, flying but silent lights approached at around 23:00 and circled our ship for some time.

These unknown flying objects were estimated to be about seven meters long. There was also a ship with large searchlights nearby. How these things off the coast of Florida can be explained remains an open question.

U.S. military exercises and alien sightings are the leading theories. We’ll probably never find out…

Flickering Lights

Off the coast of Cuba, we noticed three brightly lit boats a few kilometers away during the lookout. The strange thing was that they were not visible on AIS and therefore shouldn’t actually be there.

As we got closer, hoping to recognize something, two of the three boats suddenly switched off their lights. The dangerous part was that we could no longer see them and the map provided no information about their position. We quickly turned on the radar and managed to avoid them safely.

The remaining lit-up ship began flickering, constantly switching between a dim glow and a bright spotlight. After we had passed the three ships, all the lights suddenly turned back on and they sailed away from us.

The wildest theory someone came up with was that they were Chinese aircraft carriers.

Meteor Showers and a Moon with a Halo

Now we come to the explainable phenomena.

One night, we witnessed a beautiful meteor shower, bringing countless shooting stars. Many wishes were probably made—hopefully, some of them will come true. 😉

Another special sight was a full moon surrounded by a glowing halo, said to shine in rainbow colors. Too bad I wasn’t there—I would have loved to see it!

Lightning Storm

A thunderstorm in the middle of the night was both impressive and a little unsettling. What started as distant lightning on the horizon quickly escalated into a storm raging around the Regina.

Mysterious Disappearance of Food

Something that happens from time to time is the disappearance of food meant for the next day. Yeast plaits, cakes, nut bars and other treats have mysteriously vanished.

Some of these “crimes” can be solved, while others remain a mystery, the culprits undiscovered.

I must admit, I’ve taken food from the galley before when I wasn’t sure if it was allowed. That turned into a lot of trouble the next day, which wasn’t exactly pleasant. But previous nightwatches can confirm that you’re often accused of things you didn’t do.

Well, once you tell a lie, you’re never believed again…

Engine Failure

Something happened the day before yesterday that gave us a lot of extra work and overtime.

Due to a chain of unfortunate events, the engine suddenly failed with a loud alarm. Benji, who was steering, struggled to keep the course due to the sudden loss of speed and we drifted 40 degrees off course at just 1.5 knots.

Arne, our officer in charge, immediately instructed us to wake up the captain. Following his orders, we also woke up all the adults on board, including the teachers, Maxim, the medic and the cook.

They helped us set more sails and supervised us while the officers and the captain worked to repair the engine – all of this at 04:00AM. Completely soaked from the waves crashing onto the deck, we finally woke up the next watch, who were, of course, thrilled to start their shift like this.

The next day, we got an explanation for what had happened. Apparently, the fuel tap had accidentally been turned off by the emergency button. The engine ran on air for a while, causing it to stall and clogging the diesel filters.

Since such issues can be dangerous – especially in the waters on our way to Bermuda – only the officers, the captain and Hannes are allowed in the engine room until our next stop. In other words, only those who really understand the engines and know how to handle them.

Despite the chaos, we were praised for how well we handled the situation and worked together as a team.

Conclusion

Our nightwatch is always eventful and we rarely get bored.

It’s just a shame that so many of these events remain unexplained – we’ll probably never know the truth behind them…

Remarks:

Ella: Liebe Grüße an Mama, Papa und Jonne. Ich vermisse euch gerade total und freue mich schon aufs Telefonieren. Hab‘ euch lieb!