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 23^rd 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