Monday, May 12, 2008

Approaching Fakarava, Tuamotus

May 11, 2008--So far this passage has been a very nice one. The weather has been stable and the winds have been consistent. We are experiencing days with temperatures in the mid-80s, which is nice, but we have quite a bit of humidity and that makes it seem hotter.

Yesterday was pretty uneventful except for a mishap with a Boobie. A group of three came flying by the boat, circling a few times to check out our wind generator. The generator is on an 8-foot pole at the stern of the boat. It has three rotating blades. Well, one Boobie that was not too bright decided to try to land on the wind generator. Steve was on the side deck of the boat, and I was saying something to him when all of a sudden the generator just stopped dead. It makes a slight whine when it is running so I knew it had stopped rotating. Both of us looked up to see the Boobie trying to recover from its encounter with the machine. We thought that maybe the hit had broken the generator, but it started whirring once again. When we looked out over the water to see the Boobie, it was no where in sight so we are not sure if it survived.

That leads me to another Boobie story. Back at Nuku Hiva Steve was fishing when the black tip sharks were feeding around our boat. Well, he cast his lure and was reeling it in when all of a sudden a Boobie swooped down and bit his lure. In the process the bird hooked his wing. I think that you are beginning to understand that these are not the brightest of creatures. Steve asked me to get a towel (to cover its head) and the needle-nose pliers to pull out the lure. Well a cruiser, one from a European country, started yelling from his boat that was anchored next to us. He jumped into his dinghy, zoomed over to our boat, grabbed the fishing line, cut it with his very large knife, took the bird, and zoomed back to his boat. Steve and I just sat there speechless. He came back in a few minutes with Steve's lure, minus a barb, hands it to Steve and tells us that we shouldn't be fishing when there is a Boobie around. Steve responds that he never saw it, made a few other remarks, and put away his fishing gear for awhile. The cruiser left the next day so Steve pulled out his fishing gear again and got back to work.

Last night was again a beautiful evening. There was a crescent moon, as there has been for the past few nights, that cast a beautiful beam of light across the ocean waters to our starboard. Unfortunately, the moon is rising around noon so it sets around midnight. The rest of the night is pretty black except for a few stars or planets that are bright enough to shed light on the waves as well.

Today the color of the water was even more spectacular than before. It was still a cobalt blue, but this time it was a bright blue not a deep blue.

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