Flying Fish
Lowena
Michael & Amanda Dyer
Thu 29 Nov 2007 10:42
Flying fish are amazing creatures. I had read about them of course, but I had always assumed that the adjective 'flying' was an exaggeration of it's physiological capabilities. So imagine my shock, when I discovered that the flock of swallow-like birds which had been skirting over the waves was in fact a school of fish. I only realised my error when they reappeared, en-masse, in a spectacular unison take-off from under the waves. These things rock. If I could be a fish, I'd be a flying one.
The only problem with being a flying fish, is that whilst they can take off from the water with alacrity, they were not designed to take off from a solid base. Hence, when, during the night, a flying fish accidentally navigated itself into the back of my father's head, crash landing on the cockpit, it was unable to escape; bar the mercy of my father. Unfortunately for the fish, my father did not take too kindly to being startled in such a manner. Furthermore, he thought I would be interested in examining it's anatomical features. Thus the fish was doomed.
On a more positive note, we have succeeded in increasing our sail area by almost 100 %. Prior to now, we erred on the side of caution with regards to our extra headsail, believing it's flimsy roller-reefing to be incapable of rolling in the sail under tension. Whilst it is impossible to partially reef, we discovered that if we let the sail fly free we can roll it in completely – a much safer operation than trying to lower it downwind (which last time involved the sail going into the water). So we're now screaming along at a massive 6 knots. Well it's better than 5.