January 9, 2022
What’s your favorite color?
Traveling west through the Mediterranean Sea, we left Majorca in the morning, amazed that the good weather we’d been having continued to hold. We were picking up long-range weather forecasts from a marine weather station in Monaco to alert us of possible storms. We continued along through the chain of the Balearic Islands for that day and night. At sunrise we motored through the narrow passage between Ibiza, and little Espalmador, to head southwest toward the Spanish Mainland. Still almost no wind, and though we would occasionally get some use from the sails, we relied on the engine for all but eight hours of the trip. Our fuel tanks held 200 gallons of diesel. While we would rather have been a sailboat, we were thankful to be a powerboat when necessary.
That night, we experienced one of the prettiest sunsets we had ever seen. It made me think back to when my sister and I were young. We liked to ask everyone in our family their favorite color. I would say green, because I love trees, and also enjoyed telling people I was reincarnated from a frog. Back then, I had a great croak I felt served as viable evidence. My sister, Lynn, would say blue, to go with her eyes. My Mom chose red, and my Dad would claim sky-blue-pink as his favorite. We’d say to him, “C’mon Dad, there’s no such color as sky-blue-pink!” But that was the only choice he’d make, and for a long time I believed there was no such color. Now I know better because I’ve seen it several times at sea.
Making our way through the Med, that night we were a couple days from land. It was sunset, and totally calm. We were motoring, as we had been for most of the trip. The evening came in hazy, with clouds. As the sun set, the clouds and haze picked up a perfect pink that was marbled in with the blue of the sky. The haze closed in around us, blotting out the horizon. We were at sea in a spacious room. The color intensified, staining not just the sky and clouds, but the smooth, polished sea as well. Slight swells undulated, first pink, then blue, and then blends of the two colors. Our “room” was brightly lit and beautifully painted, with an eerie quiet broken only by the sound of our engine throbbing like a heartbeat.
I turned to Ed. Pointing to the display around us, I said, “That’s my Dad’s favorite color. That’s sky-blue-pink.”
