More wildlife – birds again, although i did see a bit of barnacle covered kelp. The little bird is back: grey/brown on top, fairly even closely flecked, white under but with dark edges to wings. about 30cm span, darts along the surface flopping from side to side very fast, wingtips in and out of the water. too hard to see more detail but really lovely to watch. and another much bigger one, probably an albatross – yellow beak, brown/grey wings top and under, short stubby body, feet tucked into rear feathers so invisible, short spear of brown from base of wing across base of tail on top. hard to judge span but perhaps 2.5 metres. lower aspect ratio than earlier Yellow nosed.
I have no idea who is reading this stuff, so is there anything anyone would like me to write about? It’s going to be a very long journey. Things that seem vastly important to us like the next cup of soup are clearly trivial and boring to anyone else although some sailors have filled whole books with bland detail of daily life and even sold a lot.
Quick summary so far: Stainless Kevvo, our Fleming windvane self steering gear, is working splendidly and steered us through the storm a couple of nights ago without hassle. We both saw 80 knot gusts that night. the desalinator is temperamental but produces drinkable water and will continue to do so. Slowly getting into the stacks of stuff inside the boat and rearranging things. Averaging 5.9 knots and have covered 600 miles in a bit over 4 days. Temperature ok, water 11 degrees. With a bit of luck, we’ll be at the Snares on Monday. After that, there’s an iceberg at 48s 117w which is more or less on our way. reasonable start, can do better. We’re ok, boat’s ok, so far so good. end of trivia.
The logs ramblings can be cryptic, so we have added: