I love offshore sailing, and I have a certain fondness for overnight trips. Of course the lack of vision, and lack of sleep are not great. However, on a clear night with little or no moon, the view is breath taking. There is nothing quite like leaning back and looking up to see the Arm of the Milky Way.
Since I saw that view I have wanted to get a photo of it. While it would be easy to take a long exposure photo with a large DSLR on a tripod, I want to take a photo from a 50 foot sailboat in the middle of the ocean. Even with perfectly calm seas, the boat is still moving and the long exposure shot will still end up being blurry and filled with streaks.
And then we got a night vision camera for EOTI to see better while night sailing. It is a SiOnyx Aurora Sport infrared camera that also does some color correction so that what is seen in the camera is as good as what you can see with your eyes, or slightly better than that.
However using the camera would not be as simple as point and shoot. The one we got did not come with a manual and I would have to learn how to adjust the settings to get the best picture possible. I was also looking for a challenge.
The first time I used this camera was while sailing from Fort Lauderdale to Cape Canaveral on SV EOTI. The image came out very blurry despite appearing clear in the view finder and my best attempts to hold the camera steady.
I would quickly learn that HDR was turned on and after the 3 frames are stacked, the picture would always be blurry, unless maybe I used a tripod, which would be a no go for this project.
I did not have a chance for more night time photography until we were sailing up the Chesapeake Bay from Norfolk to Annapolis.
Hazel the boat dog, dogging. 
Stuart sleeping in the cockpit. 
Sailing into a squall at night.
It was in the last photo with the big thunder cloud that I noticed I could get a picture of the stars. In the top middle you can see a couple of stars peeking out.
My next time pictures would be taken while stopped in Solomons, Maryland during the trip south.
From this picture I now knew that it is possible to take the photo I wanted, I just had to wait until we got offshore for a night passage, which would not be for a while as after starting in Norfolk for a week or so and then taking the Intracoastal Waterway to Beaufort, North Carolina where we stayed for a couple of weeks. It was not until mid December when we overnighted from Beaufort to Charleston that I would be able to get some good off shore night time photos.
Stuart sleeping in the cockpit again. 
The cabin lights made for some nice lighting in the cockpit. 
Hazel dogging. 
Looking up at the night sky through the back stays. 
Looking aft on EOTI to see more stars.
On this overnight trip I still had difficulty in taking the photos due to rolly seas. Many of my pictures ended up looking blurry just because of how hard it was to hold the camera still.
I feel good about how these pictures ended up despite the challenges. Maybe next time I will use a higher quality camera and take an even better picture of the night sky.
Of course while I struggled for months figuring out how to do good night photography my brother manages to snap this amazing shot on his first try.
