March 19: Day 7

Last night the wind was gusting up to 30 knotts. I have lonly seen 30 knotts one other time. It feels like a lot of wind right now. We had to shorten sail as much as possible but the boat kept getting overpowered by the unpredictable gusts. We tried taking down the storm jib only to discover that we then surrendered our steerage. As a last resort we had to alter course and run with the wind and waves, reducing stress on the sails and rigging. This constant work with the sails and the pitching seas combine to whipe me out.

At around midnight I noticed that we had a hitchhiker. A boobie had somehow managed to land on the steel arch, gripping with all its might with its awkward webbed feet. The seas were rough and the little guy could barely get purchase on the slick polished steel. For three hours he was there. I was watching the wind carefully and since the ,moon was almost full and the clouds were reflecting its silver light I could see the top of the mast (The wind chicken is a better indicator of the wind than the electronic displays, at least on our boat.). I noticed that the main sail was seperated from the mast by its top two cars. Not good. When Brett got up I told him about it and he said it was probably okay to leave it till morning but to make the ride smoother we jibed the boat and our hitchhiker, “Bird,” got a little irritated at being on the low side of the boat. He squaked at us, I’m sure that if I could speek boobie it would have beeen something like, “hey, why did you have to go and do that?” Then he attempted to to get to the high side by walking across the arch. Towards the wind generator and its sharp spinning blades. Have I mentioned Bird’s webbed duck feet? Not good for walking on slick polished steel bars. He slipped and he was not very gracefull when airborn. Brett and I were in hysterics over his bumbling progress, until he tried to land again and got clipped by the spinning wind generator. Thunk!!!!! We both kringed, he may have tried to land on or near the generator and gotten beheaded but hankfully Brett saw him scrambling out of the water and shake himself off. It looks like he hit the flag. This morning I got up early to get some sail repair done and we stitched on the two new track guides and the one new car. (Another of the guides had come off in the night with the added force of the broken ones above) It only took us one hour. I haven’t seen Bird today. I think that the incident may have been pretty traumatic for him, maybe he is on dry land and licking his wounds. We are now 750 miles from Puerto Vallarta.