The curious incident of the bird in the nighttime...
I received this report from Alex today about an event last night:
We had an incident as sea.
We were flying along, over 8kts every now and again, dark, raining at 10pm. I'm on watch and went out with head torch to reduce sail. I was on the lee side cranking the genoa sheet when something hit hard, with a thud, on my back and shoulder. No damage, didn't hurt, but it was a shock. I looked everywhere to see what hit me. Maybe a preventer line where it's tied with the bow line, but no it wasn't. It was a real mystery. Then I saw on the back deck, a bird. It looked very disoriented. A bit unsteady on its webbed feet. Once it tucked its wings in, it was looking around to see where it was. On the rolling deck it made its very unsteady way around from the starboard quarter to the port quarter, along the port side deck to the shrouds, then back to the port quarter. It never stood up properly on its legs, so I wonder if its hurt. I left it there.
I thought if it's still there in the morning, we'll feed it some of Boris's bait fish - but it may not be to its taste, not fresh enough.
At 6am it made an appearance. In front of the glass windscreen it looked like it was trying to come inside. It soon disappeared behind the life raft and hasn't been seen since.
From the pictures, it looks to me like a short-tailed shearwater, or muttonbird. It is about the right time of year when the adults start their migration from Tasmania to Alaska.
In other news, progress is being made toward Australia. After diverting to the NNW on Tuesday to avoid the stronger winds and unpleasant seas of the low, on Wednesday they were able to start heading SW towards New South Wales. The current forecast looks good for a more or less straight run to Newcastle.
To open a picture
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