Midnight Terror At Sea

A common topic I keep bringing up on these blogs when we are sailing is the significant decline in the amount of sea life we see in the last 20yrs. We haven't seen a bird for days, and there have been no flying fish on deck since we left New Zealand. If there is one thing I hate, it's fish. I don't harbor a grudge or have a petty personal vendetta against them, but they are just so unpredictable, especially out of the water. They are slimy, so I don't like to touch them, and they stink.

So how is it that in a few million square miles of ocean where I haven't seen a flying fish in weeks, the only one around can land within an inch of me? And not only that, but the entire cockpit is screened off with clear vinyl around the sides and back, and the front has glass windows. One of the windows was open just enough for a flying fish, after having calculated trajectory, wind resistance, and the optimum time to instill the maximum amount of shock, to slip through and land directly above the chart plotter and did this in the dark! So now I can't go outside until Rhona wakes up and disposes of it. This is almost as bad as when I stepped on a bird and got trapped upstairs on Blue Horizon.

In less serious news, the wind has been picking up most of the night to over 35 knots and has been shifting around a fair bit. It then died off to less than 10 knots and now seems to have settled down to 15-20 knots. We dropped the "pre-reefed" main yesterday, and while the boat speed dropped slightly, we can sail deeper off the wind, and the VMG is the same.

I just added the photo of the flying fish. Usually photos don't do things like this justice but in this case is clear to see how terrifying the whole incident must have been! It's even more ginormous than I thought.

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