Day 9

Position, 13 37N 115 41W, 105 miles made good.
This past few days have been rough. The trade winds have not been like I had read or been told by others. I'm not sure if it's just us or this season or what but we are not alone. We have talked to a few other boats in our area over the HF radio (we have seen no-one for days now) and confirmed that they are experiencing rough gross conditions as well. This is not fun and we are so far away from land. It's not the wind so much as the rough seas. They come from everywhere with no real pattern to them. They are not dangerous or breaking yet so there is no real danger from them, it's just very uncomfortable. The days have been tolerable but the nights have been near sleepless. We have not been in this nasty of seas since we left the Haida Gwaii (Queen Charlotte) islands. Lame!
We had a Red Footed Boobie on deck last night. We welcomed the company and were glad to share our little island with it. That is, until this morning when we found it had shit EVERYWHERE! How could so much shit come out of one bird? There must have been 3.5 liters of slimy-milky-shit strewn across the foredeck. Until then it was fun to watch, so graceful in the air and so awkward on deck. It was using its wings and beak to plod and crawl around the pitching deck, flopping sorta like a fish out of water. And speaking of fish, the deck was covered with flying fish this morning. So naturally, we just started feeding the fishes to the bird, which gobbled them up without pause. After it had downed about 3-4 small-medium fish in its wobbly uncoordinated on-deck fashion, I tossed it a big one. It of course snatched it up immediately, but for whatever reason (either the fish was just too big or it was already stuffed) the bird had a real hard time getting this last fish down and so it sat there on deck with its neck all distended and sort of gagged in an controlled fashion. Then, in a series of lurches, it lobbed its self overboard into the water. We were traveling at 5 knots, so there was certainly no grace involved when it crash skidded and spun to a halt in the breaking waves. I briefly saw it hack up the fish and then re-consume it, presumable having rearranged its gut contents to a more accommodating configuration.
Hyo and I then spent 20 minutes on the pitching deck scrubbing away the feces. Now that I think about it, this sailing trip has brought me within exceedingly close proximity to many forms of shit. Bird shit, whale shit, dolphin shit, fish shit and gallons of human shit. That's just not right! And one last question: why do I have dirt under my fingernails every morning? I am nowhere near dirt! I have not even seen dirt in 10 days! The closest dirt is over 1500 km away! What's with the dirt?

m