SailBlog - Wind at Last!

Graham
27/11/2008, North Atlantic Ocean, off Western Sahara

The last few days have been pretty much devoid of wind so it was great last night to finally see the boat speed increase momentarily to a speedy 7 knots. An early dinner of spicy meatballs and potato stew, allowed us to enjoy a very mellow sunset over coffee. Dark came upon us, and all was quiet on the Western (Sahara) Front. Bang. Thud. OK, here we go...what has happened? We found a small furry bundle in the cockpit, later identified as a Strom Petrel, which had flown into our wind generator. Luckily, we think it may have hit the rudder and not the blades, so was still breathing OK. As per usual on the QUASAR IV bird sanctuary, out with the spare cushion, small bowl of water, bread and tuna, and leave the bird in peace in a quiet part of the cockpit to recover. Our last recovery project a couple of months back did not have a happy ending, so we were hoping for better this time. Throughout the night, the bird wandered around the cockpit floor looking quite curious, but it was obvious that it's leg had been damaged. The good news is that at lunchtime today, it made a bid for freedom, assisted by Mark T, and was back flying again, no doubt with a sore leg! We are gradually getting closer to the Cape Verdes, but progress has been slow. Each day, we join a radio net at 1200 which allows us to all have a chat if we want and report our positions manually to the ARC office should the email system fail on board. Today's challenge is dinner tonight; fish stew. This would be less of a challenge if we had caught some fish perhaps? We nearly did this morning; a really big one, but it got away at the last minute (honest!) - it certainly generated some excitement at sunrise!