Frigate birds

31 March 2016

The current helped us enter the Gulf of Mexico as expected. Unfortunately the wind disappeared and we have been without much wind for the past 24 hours. We tried everything to keep a bit of speed but nothing really worked. Now the wind is back and quite strong and the forecasts are it will increase to 30 knots so we adjusted our sails so we can handle 30 knots without any problem and we wait for it to come. 
We wrote earlier about our frigate bird-stay and today we had at one point 17 frigate birds on our stays. And a few tropicbirds that could sit on the wheelhouse and the flagpole. With some swallows that came to rest we looked like a bird shelter! 
But with 17 big birds above the deck it does not take long before it is covered in bird shit. So we started an anti-frigate-bird-action with shaking the stays firmly. Three persistent birds looked irritated at us and spread their wings a bit for more balance and stayed. They didn’t care. But when the wind increased the ship started moving more and their place in the mast became unpleasant so they have left and the deck is clean again.