Day 21 - Are we there yet?

Good morning,

This post is a little on the late side. The reason is that we did not have much capacity for writing yesterday, with all non-sleeping hands constantly being sent above decks to try keep the boat moving through what we hope will be the last light patch of the trip (here's hoping some breeze will be snaking its way through those picturesque protrusions that make up the Rio skyline when we arrive).

The most noteworthy of our news is that we had a new crew member for a while last night.  His name was Frank. In retrospect he might not have been the most able crew member because if anyone were to send out the call for "all hands on deck" I know that he would just sit on his perch while flapping his wings ironically at the call.

If we were to use Ryan's categories, you would find that Frank would fall under the species of "sea bird" in the subspecies of "flappy". His name was short for Frankenbird, and we thought he was a parrot at first on his first investigative swoops of the boat. I must admit to being a bit unaccommodating at first, threatening Frank with a winch handle should he even come anywhere near eye-pecking range. After he had made about twenty takes at the boat I thought that he was seriously considering making a landing, and figured that this rapidly oscillating little silhouette might actually be a little bit tired by now.

It was thus that we did not object when he landed on our spinnaker pole, and were actually impressed at his balance, considering the sea state was hardly allowing us to stay well-put on the cockpit seats. He was even undaunted when the spinnaker gave a big shudder that threw him from the pole, opting then to simply perch on a very tight 12mm thick spinnaker guy.

When the time came to brief the next watch coming above deck, Clear instruction was given on how to best handle this slightly freakish looking new addition to our boat. I then went down below and shone a light through a close by hatch on to the visitor. The half-light revealed a darkish bird about the size of a pigeon, with a long, narrow beak. Quite capable of a good peck I thought. So I went and took my four hour sleep in the sound hope that Frank would at some point depart us for the greener pastures of an oil platform.

This morning all was good, the breeze was up again, the boat was moving along superbly and Frank had left.

I am not sure how this all might interest anyone following us, but somehow it was a big event in a tough day that consisted almost entirely of eking out every little inch we could to get closer to the line, to a place called civilisation, where a bird landing close to you is actually not such a big deal!

Thanks again for all the messages, we hope to reward everyone’s great support by scurrying that little tracker on quite a bit quicker over the next couple of days so watch this space - The breeze is on!

Cheers,

Ricky