25/11/2009 Midnight –
04.00 am
Last
night was very different to others this week. It continued very dark as the moon
is still young and is setting early but the wind was slightly lighter and the
sea less slap happy than it has been. We saw a ship earlier in the day, we are
near the America to Cape Town route but didn't see any lights during the night.
What did happen on my watch though was lightning, two hours of it from all over
the place.
Lightning is scary stuff when your mast is the only upstanding thing in
that part of the ocean. My first act was to grab the laptop, satellite phone,
spare hand held GPS and our cameras and push them all into the microwave oven.
We rarely use this, just occasionally in marinas but it makes an excellent
Faraday cage to protect some of our mobile electronics. Chris was okay in his
berth, I tried to stay inside away from any electronics or metal objects but
worried that there might be a ship coming into the vicinity so dashed in and out
as quickly as possible. We gradually passed through it and left it firing the
sky behind us. I was glad to hand over watch at 04.00 am and go to bed leaving
Chris to enjoy the light show astern!
I got
the morning watch call at 8.00 am and we exchanged the usual course, speed and
general status information. 'Oh and we have a visitor, he's in the cockpit.'
There he was looking vulnerable and flustered, one of the two egrets that had
been trying to land on the boat 300 miles back. Just the one, we can only think
that the other is dead. Chris has taken a few photographs which we will put on
the blog when we can get to wifi internet access, we can't send photos via the
satellite phone which we use for emailing the blog on these long sails.
It
felt very odd sitting in the cockpit with a frightened egret. When we moved
anywhere near him he flew off and landed on the foredeck but tentatively tiptoed
back on his long, scaly, dark grey legs and feet. What to do to help him came
next now that it was light, he was keeping himself to himself and eschewed our
wobbly bowl of drinking water and the tiny flying fish Chris collected off the
deck for him which he did pick up but just dropped again. Suddenly he started
trying to drink the salt water we had in a bucket tilted over on the side deck
so we sewed him off and filled it with fresh water. We needed a shallower, more
stable and less intimidating drinking vessel so the washing up bowl was filled
and he started drinking then he was standing in it and filling his long, sharp,
yellow beak with mouthful after mouthful. He got out and started preening his
feathers giving himself a very thorough going over perhaps ridding himself of
salt crystals.
The
speed at which he became confident was quite surprising, we had to move about
for rope handling, having a shower and actually cleaning up egret splatter. He
got used to this and stopped flying off just moved out of the way or tiptoed
onto the side deck. This all gave a chance to study him more. He is smaller than
we thought as they looked a lot bigger when we saw them flying, does not have
the yellow toes of the little egret and has a yellow bill (quite a fearsome tool
as are his claws). Referencing in our bird book it gives description of 3 types
of egret but we don't know if there are others. If there are only these 3 then
it seems that this bird must be a cattle egret of all things! If anyone has
further information on egrets we would love to hear from you, email: gryphon {CHANGE TO AT} mailasail {DOT} com
Signing off – Lorraine
26/11/2009 04.00 am –
08.00 am
This might explain why he
has been turning up his beak at my offers of flying fish. I had a picture of him
standing next to a muddy creek darting at fish, but I think he is really looking
for the nice ticks and grubs off a rhino's back. It would also explain why he
likes looking in any little corners or cracks with his beak. If we could find
something he would eat I think he might survive, but we can't seem to find a
nice parasite for him anywhere!
Signing off - Chris.
26/11/2009 08.00 am...............
Our
sailing is different today. Yesterday afternoon the wind moved from east to
east- south-east then it veered south east and overnight was much lighter in the
process. It has picked up now and we are sailing slightly heeled to starboard
which makes a change from the swing and sway of a following wind. We are being
pushed along on a broad reach just under the jib out to port, we can't get the
course using two head sails and this has a consequent knock on for our speed. It
was slow during the night, sometimes down to 4 knots, but now we are skipping
along at 5.8 knots, it feels rougher on this point of sailing than with a
following wind though the motion is more predictable and less rattly.
Egret
is still here. It is alarming how quickly this bird has become 'he' and 'him',
we are obviously in need of pets! When I came out this morning he was huddled in
the companionway with his head under his wing, it has rained a little on and off
and is very cloudy so all looks forlorn. The egret is not much afraid of us now,
when we both went down into the saloon for a cup of tea yesterday afternoon he
came looking for us and it caused quite a rumpus trying to get him out. That
must have been stressful for him so I don't think he will venture in again.
There
are two tropic birds circling us this morning. At first sight they look like
gannets, large white and with black wing tips but they have slightly different
heads and very long pointed tails. I think they are related to frigate birds but
we shall have to wait until we get internet access to check as we don't have a
reference book with them in.
The
blighter has just flown into the saloon again, I thought the fracas yesterday
would have put him off. It was easier to get him out this time, I managed to
pick him up with a long pair of tongs, I'm slightly afraid of handling him
because of the fearsome beak. I have refilled the washing up bowl with fresh
water and he is now standing in it gulping down beakfuls. Poor thing was thirsty
and I hadn't noticed, no wonder he flew in!
As
the day continues stormy weather is building but egret's confidence continues
and his attempts to follow us down below have increased. At the last intrusion I
resorted to picking him up by hand and hauling him out. He is very skinny and
feels extremely fragile. It is good that he will drink but if he doesn't eat it
seems most likely he will die. He might fly off again of course, he has tried
this twice but returned each time after about 20 minutes. Goodness knows how
long he spent on the wing before landing on Gryphon II, we saw him with his
flying mate 300 miles away to the east on Monday 23rd before he
landed here and that was at least 810 miles from the nearest land. We have
wondered if the 2 birds had somehow been on a ship when the were inadvertently
taken off to sea. We don't know if they are migratory but don't think so, we
need a bird encyclopedia on board, we only have one for fish!
Signing off - Lorraine
