March 7, 2008 Lat 07.17 Long 83.34

I would like to introduce you to our newest acquaintance. Her name is Betty Boobie, I am making a huge assumption here that she is a girl, and she is a red footed bobbie. She first came into our lives about 5 hours ago when she gracefully landed on our solar panels. We weren’t particularly happy to see her perched there; 1: because she would block some sun and 2: because she might shit on the panels and that again would lead to problem #1. We took her picture thinking she may only be with us for a fleeting moment. She let us get quite close and then as Barry moved in for the ultimate close-up she gracefully spread her wings and flew off. She is a flyer, primarily, not a soarer as are the frigate birds which are about.

ANYWAYS, she came back for another landing on the solar panels and we gently discouraged her by calmly waving our arms and talking in quiet dulcet tones to her so she would know that we truly loved her, but did not really want her on the solar panels. She did another couple of circuits of the boat and then decided that the stainless steel pulpit at the front of the boat looked like a good spot. She settled in, we were flying the spinnaker at the time and she calmly sat there and gave us her opinion on what we should be doing with the sheets to make the thing fly better, she after all has vast experience with flying.

The wind really is quite shitty out here, that is. there is none, so after poking along at 1.5 knots for several hours we decided to take the spinnaker down. Betty was a little put out that we would invade her domain and remained glued to the pulpit until I was within an arms length. She clumsily re-alighted once we had the sail put away and remained there as we motored ever closer to the Galapagos. I wonder what would be their position on a live imported boobie?????

We mistakenly thought the wind had come up a little and hopefully rolled out the genoa. This involves unfurling it from the forestay which it is tightly round about. Betty was aghast, fearfully listening to and watching it start to unroll. She couldn’t stand it anymore and after a backward apprehensive glance she once again took to the air. She finally figured out it offered her no more problems than the other beast we had up there and came back calmly and serenely alighting once again on the pulpit. She remains there still; hitch hiking her way across the waters. Every once in awhile she almost upends herself examining the water for some tasty morsel, she must be getting hungry, we haven’t seen her eat anything.

Oh well, as you can tell, DAY 2 of our Galapagos crossing is fraught with excitement and danger. I will keep you posted.