Day 5 - Over half way! - Refuelling & birds nests...
Talulah's Web Diary
Paul & Anette Morris
Fri 20 Jun 2008 12:29
Noon, 20th June 2008
The strangest thing happened yesterday when we were putting in a reef. One of the reefing lines brought a birds nest out of the boom as we pulled it through! Anette and I debated from where it had come and concluded that the nest must have been there since the boat was ashore in Grenada last year! During that time the boat was ashore, up what can best be described as a 'jungle creek' to avoid the worst of the hurricane season, and lots of 'tiny creatures' came to live on board. I found birds nests in the binocular box, whole families of tiny tree frogs in the rope 'tidies' and numerous geckos of all kinds of colour running all over the place. None of these little beasties dared to come below or inside the boat however, and the snuggest place that any of them found was as we now know, the boom. I wonder what happened to the bird....?
We were not sure from just looking at the weather synopsis for the next few days, when it would be 'calmer' enough to refuel. So we made the decision to top up the fuel tanks on the boat from the reserve we carry in jerry cans, between rain showers. Well the filler pipes for both tanks are half way down the transoms of each hull, which meant standing on the lowest step on the transom to access the filler cap and do the job properly. Well you can imagine what fun that was in a 'lumpy' sea which perpetually washed up and over the lower steps of the transom, so naturally I thought that just wearing swimming trunks and a harness were what I needed. Good job too, as I got a thorough soaking from not just the ocean, but from the diesel too as I siphoned it out of the cans into the tanks. Anette also got covered in the stuff as she opened and shut the cans and slid them around. Actually the siphoning of the diesel left a sufficiently bad enough taste in my mouth to give me an excuse to have a large glass of whiskey afterwards! (Anette's idea, not mine!)
More dolphins yesterday and this morning! There seem to be lots of them in this patch of the ocean, charging over to visit us when they hear or see us, and then playing in the pressure waves from the bows, or just racing us to the next wave. It's always great to see them.
It has rained a lot since yesterday, it is very 'squally' at times, and the winds been up to 32 knots, but we had a respite late yesterday evening when winds died back to 15 or 20 knots and the sea eased a little. The clouds cleared at midnight and the full moon lit up the whole ocean - beautiful! But by dawn the clouds, rain and winds were back. There is an area of low pressure to our west, moving in the same direction as us and we appear to be just on the edge of it, catching the wind and rain for the next few days. At least the wind is on our starboard quarter - which is just where we want it.
541 miles to run to the Lizard and 145 miles run in the last 24 hours.
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