Signs of Life

April 20, 2019

Day 197

Noon Position: 07 10S  26 16W

Course(t)/Speed(kts): NWxN 5.5

Wind(t/tws): ExS 10

Sea(t/ft): E 5

Sky: Cumulus, some heavy, and cirrus

10ths Cloud Cover: 9

Bar(mb): 1015+

Cabin Temp(f): 90!! (the high was 94)

Water Temp(f): 86

Relative Humidity(%): 64

Sail: #1 genoa and main, reach to broad reach, starboard.

Noon-to-Noon Miles Made Good (nm): 147

Miles since departure: 26,894

Avg. Miles/Day: 137

Leg North Miles: 3,944

Leg North Days: 31

Avg. Miles/Day: 127

A brisk wind these last twenty-four hours gave Mo a nice push along till late morning. The breeze has been less kind this afternoon, tailing off as a deck of altostratus moved in. Cloud covered the whole sky by sundown and for the first time since we departed 40S.

I’m having to be careful not to push too hard. For the second day in a row, I begin to feel light headed by midday. Too much strong sun and not enough fluids. Have donned a hat and am on my third liter of water as I type.

—

There are signs our ocean environment is changing.

A bird flew through my sextant shot this morning, and when I followed its path, the terminus was a throng of like birds, Sooty Terns, perhaps. As many as twenty.

Loping, looping flight and a raspy call. At the margins, a solitary, all white bird, which I imagined to be a Fairy Tern.

In the afternoon, a single, large storm petrel. Species unknown, but it was the largest of its kind I’ve ever seen.

Also in the afternoon and while taking the measure of the wind, I noted unusual movement in the water near Mo, which turned out to be a school of Dorado. They were swimming as if in a wolf pack off to starboard in anticipation of Mo’s flushing something interesting, like a pod of flying fish.

Flying fish we see regularly though infrequently, and overnight Mo typically scoops a couple into her scuppers. We’ve seen so little animal life at all in the middle Atlantic that as I tip these unfortunates over the side, I fear that we may have inadvertently reduced the population of flyers to a critical level. Surely there can’t be more than a handful.

The presence of a pack of Dorado suggests otherwise.

The pack remained off to starboard for several hours, bluey-green and yellow darts surfing the inside of the small, blue waves and matching our pace with ease. Then, after a long time, and more from a sense of duty than desire, I dug the lures out of the forepeak. And when I finally lowered a bright orange hoochie into the water, the Dorado were gone.