A Visitor

Day 66

Noon Position: 49 27S 49 11W

Course/Speed: NNE3

Wind: S7

Sail: Both headsails poled out full, flopping around

Bar: 1002, steady

Sea: Small rollers from the N and SW

Sky: Clear

Cabin Temp: 60

Water Temp: 48

Miles last 24-hours: 92

Miles since departure: 8501

Some birds are more curious than others. The Wandering Albatross, for example, can’t be bothered. It approches until it recognizes that odd object on the horizon that is not a wave and is not a fish. “Oh, a boat; never mind.” And then it glides away with as much effortlessness as it used on its approach. It’s a big bird with a big belly to fill. It doesn’t have time to chat.

The smaller Albatrosses–still the biggest thing around–like the Black Browed and the Grey Headed, are more social, will circle in for a thorough examination. This happened frequently on the approach to Bahia Cook when I was hand steering and had time to notice. A particular bird, of the many on the wing near that coast, would take a fancy to Mo. He’d surf around and around the boat, hover over the cockpit, even land nearby and watch as Mo and that unusual being clad in red, made their slow way east.

I would often shout, “HELLO!” at the top of my lungs to the hovering birds. Possibly this served to intensify the stare I got, but no bird ever condescended to make an answer or even look startled.

Today, it was a wholly brown petrel (Great-Wing? or some other of the “dark” petrels south of his region?) that came calling.

It was our second morning of wind so light I could barely feel it move, and yet Mo made way and (somehow) Monte kept her on course. I was at chores on deck when I first noticed the bird. The salon hatches leak a bit when water is breaking over the house, and today’s bodger for that was to put a layer of coax tape over the rubber so as to create a gooey (and we hope watertight) seal when the hatch is compressed closed. That and the lifelines needed tightening. And then there’s always some chafe to chase.

I saw the bird plot in the water close to our minimal wake and didn’t think much of it. Five minutes later I noticed another plop. Same bird. Nearly same spot. This time I watched. The bird paddled furiously for a minute attempting to keep up with Mo’s 3 knots. Then gave up. Then swooshed its beak in the water for a bit. Then yawned. Then took off, circled, and plopped nearby. This process repeated for several hours.

A Black Browed cruised in but didn’t stay. The fly-like-mad-till-your-wings-fall-off gadflys flew like mad all around but seemed not to notice Mo or her attendant. Only the brown petrel hung close.

Late in the afternoon the wind came up 12 knots from the SSW. Finally Mo’s sails filled. No more rattle and bang. The brown petrel too decided to stretch its wings. Around and around Mo it went–over the cockpit where I stood watching, under Mo’s spread-wide genoas, over waves and swoop high, then back toward Mo for another close-up. Over and over and over.

Finally, I went below for a cup of coffee, and when I came back on deck, the bird was gone.

Even as a child I thought Doctor Doolittle had missed his calling. Here was a guy who could talk to animals, but he never talked to anything but the cows and chickens. He never went off to ask questions of the snow leopard or the condor or the sperm whale.

Because even as an adult, I’d give anything to be able to invite this brown petrel in for cheese and crackers. I want to know what it eats, how it finds what it eats, how it knows to cant its wings this way or that over this or that wave, how, when I’m on drogue in a storm and in survival mode, it can fly over gray beards the size of city blocks with the same nonchalance it employs today. Mostly I want to know what it’s like to live, day and night, on the ocean.

—

The odor in the forepeak, where I store all more food, is producing that stale scent of rotting vegetation. Likely this is the cabbage that went missing some months back, but for all my sleuthing I can’t find it. I did find, however, five oranges, packed aboard the morning Mo went under the Golden Gate Bridge. All are still in perfect order, except the two that I ate, whose sweet deliciousness is being happily digested.

—

Heavy wind is slamming into the west coast of South America. Seven hundred miles east of us, a very tight low with gale force winds is dropping down from the northwest. But here, puffy cumulus; cobalt blue water; an (almost) warm tradewind-like breeze…at 50S. It’s weird.