We left Greece early yesterday morning. Everyone worked really long hours since it was such a quick turn around. Because I got the most sleep I stood the Chief Mate's morning watch. I came on watch at Midnight just as the ship was preparing to get underway - by the time the pilot was aboard and all our lines were cast off it was about 0200 - which meant that I had an 8 hour bridge watch ahead of me! It was a long 'un! We sailed past Athens then south via the Piraeus traffic separation scheme. Open waters called our name as we made our way through the Greek Isles. Traffic was pretty dense which kept me on my toes but also made the watch tick past a little quicker.

When the sun rose I was definitely ready for a little diversion - and was happy to get Big Bertha out! As you know, I love taking pictures at night and so it was fun to have a full moon on the stbd bridge wing and a rising sun on the port bridge wing! It was just too bad that I couldn't get them in a shot together!

I messed around for quite some time in manual settings trying to get a photo to look what I was actually looking at. With the sun below the horizon it literally looked like a rainbow. You could distinctly see red on the horizon merging into orange, yellow, a slight tinge of green, blue twilight sky that almost looked violet as the sky above was darker.

The Azimuth ring (this is what we take celestial observations with to double check the accuracy of our compass) was backlit by the twilight sky and I thought it made it look extra nautie.

As I was on the stbd bridge wing snapping away at the moon I looked through the house and orange was reflected on all the bridge windows as the sun got a little higher.

The sun finally joined us - back lighting some islands - it seemed as if the sun was setting the island on fire!

All in all Big Bertha got a pretty nice workout!