Walvis Bay, Namibia to St. Helena - Day 3
Harmonie
Don and Anne Myers
Tue 1 Jan 2013 10:04
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20:29.458S 05:53.748E
January 1, 2013
Eleven dead fish.
We are trying to decide if eleven dead flying fish plastered
all over our decks is a good sign for the new year or bad. There
weren't thirteen dead fish, so that's probably good, but maybe seven or eight
would have been better? The number eleven just doesn't seem to have any
significance. Perhaps the message is in the fish, and
not the number. Like loaves and fishes and all that. That would
be good. But then again, maybe it's more like 'sleep with the fishes',
which would be bad (and creepy).
It's possible the dead fish have nothing to do with
us. For all we know there could have been a rollicking New Year's Eve
party down there last night, and some of the flying fish may have
overdone the champagne. In their drunken stupor, they might have
thought Harmonie's underbelly was that of a whale, and decided to hop on for a
midnight ride. Imagine their surprise when they smacked
into Harmonie's hard, angular, unyielding surface instead of the curvy,
comfy, squishy whale back they were expecting. Too bad for them,
that's what they get for flying while intoxicated. Aside from one Don
was able to flush down into the cockpit gutter and out to sea, some died a
slow and sometimes violent death (we could hear them flapping), and the rest we
didn't know existed until Don patrolled the deck this morning and found their
carcasses in the middle of messy piles of scales, guts and blood. These
aren't the tiny flying fish that fly aboard unnoticed until about a week later
when their tiny bodies are found stiff and seared to the deck by a tropical
sun. No, these eleven were old enough to know better - each was
at least six or eight inches long. Hmmm...hope their families aren't too
upset. On the bright side, somebody out there in the deep blue (more
like a deep green under this incessantly overcast sky) sea was
thrilled when eleven prepackaged meals showed up on their watery doorstep
this morning like a gift from the gods for the new year.
We continue to sail nicely on a broad reach in, you guessed
it, 10-20 knots of wind from the southeast.
720 miles to go.
Here's hoping your doorsteps and decks are devoid of all
drunken dead fish on this fine New Year's morning.
Anne
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