Company

Ive been meaning to write about bird life out here, and have extra reason to do so now, as one of them, after multiple unsuccesful attempts managed to land on the Targa frame last evening. I should know the names of the birds but I dont - this one is the large brown one that is commonest out here, and usually when they appear thay do a couple of turns and swoop past the boat a few times craning their necks down to look, and then they carry on. Last evenng one kept coming back and initially tried to land on the mast, then briefly settled on the starboard spreader, and finally on the targa frame at the end away from the Air breeze wind generator which was only turning slowly as it isnt active at present - (the solar cell keeps the battery topped up effortlessly) I thought it was quite cute to have a passenger and some company but the bird ignored me. It stayed all night in that one spot and disappeared at first light. And then I disovered the shit all over the Targa canopy, and it wasnt cute any more!. I scrubbed it all off and threw a few buckets of water over everything, managing to get a face full of it when I got my timing all wrong, but in future I shall discourage passengers.

I gybed to starboard not long after I posted the blog yesterday and an hour ago gybed back. I also pulled the headsail in as we are going to arrive at Suwarrow in the dark tomorrow night otherwise so I have decided to slow down a bit. AT noon we had 180nm to go. The sea is a bit bigger today, some 3 metre waves and the wind a little stronger, up to 22 knots. I hope this trend doesnt continue as it could make it too dangerous to attempt to enter the lagoon at Suwarrow, in which case I will just have to take a photo and sail on to Niue or Tonga. That would be hard to take!

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