November 2015
We were about 400 miles from land and he’d been circling us for a while, with each approach to our stern getting closer and closer. I wondered if maybe it was some kind of fishing technique. Maybe our boat stirs up fish near the surface? I watched for a while and my busy mind moved on to other things (while my body just lounged there).
A few hours later, while I was still lounging in the cockpit, something strange caught my eye at the back of the bimini. I thought maybe it was a trick of light and didn’t pay much attention. Then there it was again: Tail feathers. I slowly raised my head up over the bimini and there was the boobie*. He looked back at me with a disinterested expression. I was concerned. I’ve heard about the mess they can make. But he looked a little bedraggled and I didn’t have the heart to chase him off. I decided to have a little talk with him.
“OK, you can stay there as long as you like but leave it like you found it. No Pooping!”
He was paying attention, he seemed to understand, but thankfully, he said nothing back (because that would have been weird). I thought we had an understanding.
We both relaxed back in to the routines of being at sea. Him: preening and sleeping. Me, the same without the preening (my watch was over).
In the morning, we found out that maybe we didn’t have an understanding. That, or maybe it was just total disrespect. This rock star of a bird totally trashed his room!
This stuff is hard to clean. Even after the short time it’d been there, and even with the damp evening, it turned to concrete!
*He may have been a gannet and not a boobie, but I couldn’t identify him for sure. Him? Yea, I think so. Guys just know these things! -Rich
