Another couple of days have passed and you won’t be surprised to know that not much has happened. We are still flying our Code 1 and it hasn’t come down for nearly a week now. The whole crew has been helming the whole time, so everyone has gotten pretty good now. The only downside to the perfect sailing conditions is the lack of entertainment and excitement that sail changes and challenging conditions bring, but we found salvation a couple days ago though and that salvation came in the form of boobies.
Boobies are a rather odd looking and very curious bird with large round heads and eyes that stick out and always seem to stare at you in a slightly confused yet standoffish look. They've suddenly taken to providing crew entertainment with the slightly odd things they seem to get up to. Yesterday, we had a young one land in the back of Dare To Lead, behind the helm cage, it hung around for a photoshoot and a gybe before realising it was going to struggle to get off as it was too big to fit though the netting. I wondered over to try and help it. Deciding I’d got plenty close enough, it flapped up onto the side of the boat and tried to fly away, got its wing caught on some of the string and then had to flap around a little to break free before ungracefully dropping into the water.
About five minutes later it tried to land on our pulpit but it misjudged its approach, hit the Yankee hanked onto the forestay and fell into the water again. We hope he gets better at flying soon.
Today we've had one land on the top of our mast right next to our precious windvane, seeming to want to stay the night, and it’s still there now despite our best attempts. We've clapped at it, shaken the backstays to wobble the mast shone our spotlight at it and yet he seems unphased. Will our wind instruments survive this advancement? Tune in in two days' time to find out, but if you see us going off at strange angles to the rest of the fleet you could safely assume that's why.
Charlie, Ryan and the DTL crew