Gosh.
My feathery nemesis returned with six of his friends.
For some reason, they all decided to sit on the windward lifelines with the output end facing inwards. Initially, they were sitting aft of the shrouds, which meant any fishy output would be blown all over the cockpit and, more importantly, me.
So I spent a good two hours whacking them with a stick and poking them in a delicate area (still using the stick!) every time they came back. They really didn’t like it and got quite angry.
And let me be very clear: these are not Walt Disney birds of the forest, smelling of berries. They are wild, vicious predators the size of a backpack and they stink of fish.
They slowly moved forwards and spent the night sitting near the bow. Some hills are not worth dying on, so I was happy with the compromise and only gave them a whack if one of them forgot the rules and moved aft.
We have blustery conditions with two reefs in the main and heavy reefs in the headsail. There is a large high-pressure system west of New Zealand giving us wind in the right direction, but it is pretty strong, with gusts up to 30 knots apparent last night. At least it’s from the right direction. Its settled down a little now and we have about 20knts apparent from 130 degrees.
Ocean Breeze is going well and handling the seas comfortably. The waves are around 2 metres, with the occasional 3-metre one coming through, and we are surfing every now and again down the big ones, with the GPS showing up to 9 knots.
Our ETA for Mackay yesterday was Saturday afternoon, but we will probably be updating that to late morning.
Hopefully the waves will wash off some of the bird “memories”.