Day 4
Digiboat's "Product Testing"
Simon Blundell
Sun 9 Oct 2011 21:00
16°17.9309N
117°07.25046E
Mon 10/10
0340
Another day of
solid progress. Winds have been very variable as we seem to be in a convergence
zone with winds from the W China Sea meeting with the Pacific Trades and SE
winds coming over the Philipines. And tossed into the mix is the more and more
frequent rain squalls. Last night was mostly light and wet. Today had good winds
around 15kn from the SW which gave us a good burst of speed for a few hours.
Unfortunately our spinnaker halyard is jammed at the top of the mast so we can't
use the kite until I can convince Evan, our resident monkey, to go up and fix
it.
Ocean swell
much more noticeable now, but confused by a pronounced wind wave from the W and
a small chop from the SE. So, much rougher than it has been and expect that to
worsten as the forecasts show 20-25kn E/ENE winds a day or so ahead of
us.
We've been
living in an avery for the past few days. I think every species of bird is Asia
has dropped by (and left their droppings). The migratory birds rarely fly away,
so once they croak we toss them overboard and see if they'd prefer to swim. A
familiar "friend" from last year is a large white heron/crane type thing which I
call the Hitchhiker Bird. We had several last year in the China Sea, they stay
onboard (crap everywhere) and for several days and as soon as they see land they
fly off. Evan and Han Thaung were force feeding it water when it first arrived.
Evan was holding its beak open while HT poured water down its throat. Well it
crapped and regurgitated for the next half hr. But it is still alive and with us
2 days later.
SJB