Red Footed Boobies that is!

Strangely enough, but perhaps not, when you are several hundreds of miles from land, you do not expect to find yourself crowded by feathered friends.

This morning during my dawn watch, I picked up this soaring bird that appeared to be taking an unusual interest in my boat having made several fly by passes at the pulpit. Finally having measured up the runway, she adeptly glided in and surprisingly with webbed feet managed to land on the stainless steel pulpit and spent the next hour preening herself.

Her agility to balance on one leg carefully preening the feathers on absolutely every inch of her body, sometimes balancing on one leg, and would make any Tai Chi master envious. This was specifically spectacular, because webbed feet can hardly grasp and the boat was rolling up and down, forward and aft, and left to right in 6 foot seas.

Without so much as a thank you for providing a landing strip in the middle of the ocean, she soared off across the waves in her endless search for food.

The other interesting thing is the arrival of the flying fish. Every morning it is possible to walk up to the bow and find a half a dozen or more small flying fish laying on the deck having been stranded through the night.

When I first saw them soaring across the waves, I thought they were clumsy birds with very little skill in landing only to determine that they were actually fish ranging in size from 6 to 10 inches and capable of flying distances of 50 yards or more before crashing into the water like a downed fighter plane. I am uncertain as to why they make these flights, perhaps to escape predators �-- something else to look up when I have better Internet access.

We are now only 100 miles from Hilo and expect to make landfall sometime in the early morning after dawn. We have already been in contact with Customs and Immigration by satellite phone and they are expecting our arrival. Having spent the day in Hilo we will then leave in late afternoon, around the south end of the island under way to Kona which will give us an opportunity to see the lava fields at night flowing into the ocean. We're all looking forward to hopefully a very spectacular show.

We are now 18 days at sea and in many ways it seems but a blink of an eye.

Amazing time warp!