Noctilucent clouds - or old men seeing things?

Whilst approaching Northern Spain back in June, approx 45deg 22'.00N  8deg 07'W, my friend and his watch collegue reported seeing a haze of sparkly lights in the distance, "rather like the lights of Manhatten, similar to skyscapers all lit up" they said. They were so taken by this that they slowed the boat to investigate.  Nothing of course was there so the matter was dropped.    It made quite an impession on them though and today one of them came up with this :-

Noctilucent clouds are bright cloudlike atmospheric phenomena visible in a deep twilight. The name means roughly night shining in Latin. They are known as polar mesospheric clouds when observed from a satellite in space. They are most commonly observed in the summer months at latitudes between 50° and 70° north and south of the equater.

Of course being in the wrong latitudes altogether and looking south at the time , I've simply put it down to old men hallucinating.  

We did see a great deal of phosphorescence in the bow wave and side wash from our yacht at times on this trip.

Has anyone else experienced such things as Noctilucent Cloud?