Yesterday evening just before it got dark we got a visitor. He struggled a bit with finding the way to the reception but managed after flying around Cubaneren several times. We are talking about a bird that we don`t know too much about but he was very keen on a free ride in the headwind. He had been flying around the boat most of the afternoon, feeding on flying fish. A fantastic flyer, gliding almost all the time, yet very powerful in the maneuvers.
When the sun had set he tried a couple of places before settling down. First he was going for the mast top but realized that would probably be an extremely bumpy night as we were sailing upwind in 2,5m of waves. The next place was to try to get on to the radar dome that is always horizontal. Between Panama and Costa Rica we had a guest there over the night but that was a small one. This big bird simply could not fit in the long wings between backstays and various antennas. This ended in a lot of wing flapping and what looked as an attempt on rape on our AIS antenna. Where he ended was on the bow at the pulpit. We thought that a bird living out here in the blue should have Donald Duck – swimming feet but this one had claws. After a couple of dives with the boat were the bird lifted off and came back again the wind eased off and even though it can`t have been the most comfortable ride it was definitely the only available and he stayed with us until sunrise when the fish was beginning to fly again and he could fly in to the breakfast buffet.
Life on board is now very easy as the wind has disappeared and we are motoring NE. Hopefully we will have the wind back tomorrow morning (in 10-12 hours from now) and that will be wind from behind that will hopefully give us pleasant spinnaker sailing for the next week.
Hamburgers for lunch today and cinnamon rolls for dinner. Shower, shaving and tanning the rest of the day. Could be worse!
