Sunset, Eleuthera, Governor’s Harbour mid-April 2021

Sunsets are our favorite shared moments when cruising. It’s time to take a deep breath, release the worries of the day, sip a refreshing drink, hold hands and let Mother Nature bring on the show. IMHO, as a connoisseur of sunsets, there is no better place to see a sunset than over the water.

We were hoping for a glimpse of a green flash,  which occurs when the atmosphere causes the light from the Sun to separate, or refract, into different frequencies. Viewing them is a balancing act as it’s unsafe to stare at a setting sun, and yet green flashes are fleeting; they last only a second or two.

We’re among the lucky—we’ve seen green flashes—more than once. However, that eve, like nearly every night on our 2021 Bahamas trip,  cloud banks on the horizon obliterated the possibility.

Yet what we saw instead was magnificent in its own right, evoking a sense that felt more planetary, seeing this from another world than an everyday sunset on our own humble little blue marble of a planet. 

La Soufrière, St. Vincent photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

We thought it was La Soufrière, St. Vincent’s actively erupting volcano, about 1200 miles away.

Nope. Instead, it came from a source at least four times as far—dust from the Sahara Desert. It’s an annual Bahamas atmospheric invasion, blanketing the skies in a milky whiteness; those particles amplifying the sunset’s colors.

I remember the 2012 summer we first started cruising and my surprise at the vivid red sunset we saw in the San Juans, lit by particles from wildfires in Russia, over 4,000 miles away.

In yesterday’s news. New Yorkers were suffering from air quality issues due to the U.S. West Coast: California and Oregon fires, over 3,000 miles away.

Both the weather and the Coronavirus pandemic are stark reminders of our interconnectedness, whether we like it or not.

Location Location

Herons, egrets, pelicans and pigeons are prolific in Fort Pierce City Marina, where s/v Gallivant is docked.

We are currently house-sitting in the same town where we are selling our boat, Fort Pierce (Marina), Florida at 27 27.039N 16 21.19W. This post is a retrospective of our time in Governor’s Harbour, Eleuthera, the Bahamas in April of 2021. My logbook is on the boat, so I will update this post with our lat/long for Governor’s Harbour, Eleuthera when I can check our logbooks.

I’ll give an update on what’s happening where we currently are in my next post.