Position: 03 degrees, 33 minutes north; 146 degrees, 54 minutes west 125 NM day

I don’t know who was more surprised late last night. Ann when she stood up in the cockpit to look around for traffic or the seabird who decided to roost for the night on top of the dodger.

As Ann stood up, she literally came face to beak – we’re talking about 6 inches here – with a very large seabird (might have been a Shearwater) who decided Charisma was just the place to rest for the night out here in the middle of no-where. Of course, I imagine the Shearwater was equally startled to see Ann suddenly appear from below its new found habitat.

If you said “both” were surprised, you’d be about right. Faced (pun intended) with the startling discovery Ann shrieked, the Shearwater shrieked and both retreated temporarily to sort things out. Clearly neither were expecting to have company on such a lovely night.

After the initial shock wore off, both Ann and the Shearwater decided Charisma was probably big enough for the two of them. By the time I came up for my watch, Ann was reading her book under the dodger and the Shearwater was relaxing on the stern pulpit about eight feet away where it stayed through my watch on to first light when it took off, no doubt to do some morning fishing.

Our other animal encounter was at sunset. Just as I was making Charismas, Ann yelled down that there was a whale 50 yards off the starboard beam. It turned out to be some Risso’s dolphins, which are quick large and were fishing. They would jump clear of the water and splash down hard presumably to startle the fish they were hunting. The big splash initially looked like a whale. Anyway, they hung nearby for almost half an hour as our evening entertainment doing high jumps and big splashes.

On the boat work side, early this morning, around 0530, for some reason I decided to have a look at Wilson, our Monitor wind vane. Good thing I did as there was a major chafe issue in the making on one of the steering lines. I waited until Ann was up for her watch at 0800 and together we furled the jib, hove-to (i.e. stopped Charisma) lifted the vane paddle and I disassembled the steering line, pulled 8 inches through so the chafe point would move and reassembled everything. I think that will hold it until we get to Hawaii and I can buy a new set of steering lines.

Just finishing up adjusting the wind vane steering lines.

All in a day at sea.