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Xenial - Day 22 - Signs of life beyond Xenial



Let me make one thing abundantly clear - we are bored. And knowing that we have many more days ahead of us like this doesn't ease the boredom. So if you are looking for tales of action and adventure, you are better served looking somewheres else.

Why are we bored? It comes down to halyards. We don't have any left. So even if we wanted to risk breaking our third foresail, the gennaker, we don't have anything to hoist it with. That leaves us with our faithful mainsail gently pulling us towards Grenada, and a little too gently at that.

Cruising at this leisurely pace, we are losing sense of time and space, and find it hard to believe there is a world beyond our 45 feet. We haven't seen or heard a boat in days. But today we had some signs of outside life.

Most exciting of all, we had a visitor on board! A bird came to rest on Xenial, and spent a few hours walking up and down the deck. As for everything that happens on board, a committee was quickly formed: The Bird Watching committee. It had two main goals - study the diet of the bird and photograph it. With regards to the first, it was offered a dried fly fish and some bread. The bird refused both. With regards to photographing it, the committee had much more success. The Major, the Captain and Bobo could be spotted walking all over and below deck, looking for new angles, opening windows to get a scoop, real paparazzi! The bird watching committee believes the bird was an aigrette. The Major remembers sighting many of them in Cuba. The Captain remembers them from Marco Island (Florida). The bird was finally shooed away when he landed on Bobo's clean laundry. It was proof that there is life in the skys!

The second sign of life outside Xenial was less direct. The Captain decided to put down a second fishing line behind the boat. As one could have probably predicted, the two lines tangled themselves. But when we reeled them in at the end of the day, the bait at the end of the new line was missing. It worked a bit too well! So we concluded that there was life the water as well!

Finally, we got proof that there is human life somewhere beyond our sailboat. At dinner time, the VHF crackled to life! It had been quiet for days at end. All conversation died, we stopped the music, and tried to listen in. Where they speaking Swedish? Or was it Danish? Our soon created interpretation committee couldn't quite make out what was being said and the crackle soon died out. But we had hope, other humans existed elsewhere!

Who knows what tomorrow will bring? For now, from under the shine of the moon that is back to keep us company, I say to you

Over and out,
Mavi

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