Morning broke in monotone, a smooth, gray sky pressing down on a calm gray sea, weighty as a cast iron lid. The lid was cocked. It let leak in the first thin color of day, a band of yellow on the eastern horizon.

To Robin’s east, a sailboat’s rig stood in gray silhouette. Monica came on watch in time to see the glowing coal, the first lump of sun bursting up from its slumber off the sailboat’s transom.

During the night, a bird landed on the cabin top just ahead of the dodger. Its wing feathers were ruffled like tattered cloths as we moved through the still air.

At the 50-fathom line, the radar showed a gauntlet ahead. I called, but no one responded. Then Peter McCrea heard me. He explained I was traveling through an offshore field of giant lobster buoys.

Moments later, I talked with the captain of a lobster boat. I wished him good fishing, just  as we escaped his forest of buoys and radar reflectors. The next gauntlet was the Bermuda 1-2 fleet. I lit the deck light, and Robin wove between the sailboats that were caught in the near-dead air.

Monica sleeps once again, having given me a two-hour nap. If the sea decides, we could eat ashore tonight and sleep with Robin at a dock.