May 22, 2017
As it began to get dark, we started to hear a few birds–it seems our feathered friends from last night’s anchorage had found us, and they’d decided to invite a couple of their friends. We were just about to start a movie when I noticed something about these birds sounded familiar–they sounded a bit like the birds from Alfred Hitchcock’s move, The Birds.
Hey, wouldn’t it be fun to watch that movie while life imitates art outside?
Rich agreed; so we started the movie.
As it turned out, life imitated art more than we expected. The darker it got, the more bird noise emanated from outside on our boat. Finally we paused the movie and went outside to take a look. We were pretty shocked by what we saw, and it only got worse as the night went on. We already had our companionway curtain down, but soon we had to put in our bottom hatch board as well. Since pictures speak louder than words, we’ve made a short video from this very strange night.
In all, the birds all over our boat were an interesting and kind of fun experience, especially since some of the sounds and scenes matched the movie so well! Our little friends had no fear of us and we were able to get very close to them – too close sometimes! (The scream in our movie came when a bird flew into my head!)
The terror came the next morning when we discovered what they’d left behind. Thankfully, Rich had finished installing an anchor locker washdown pump before this passage. He must have been out there at least an hour hosing off the boat! Even after we arrived in New Caledonia, we were still finding more bird poop and feathers.–Cyndi
