A bird, a fish, more than one squid, and the Italian coast guard

What do these things have in common? All of them visited us on our 530 nautical mile passage from Sicily to Ibiza. It isn’t unusual for songbirds to hitch a ride on a passing sailboat. It’s very sad because usually they’re exhausted, but you don’t really want them pooping all over the boat. This little bird, a swallow, flew into the cabin a couple of times and had to be chased out before it finally settled down under the dinghy on the foredeck. We assume it isn’t still there because we later had some fairly rough seas (they call them moderate in the Med) with waves washing over the foredeck.

John found the dead flying fish in the cockpit when the Italian coast guard came up next to us at 4 a.m. and shined a powerful spotlight in his eyes. I was sound asleep below when I heard John yell, “Shirlee, get dressed and come up here!” in a tone that discouraged questions. I stuck my head into the cockpit just in time to hear John on the radio asking them to turn the light off. At that point we didn’t actually know who they were, only that they had a very fast little boat without much of a radar shadow. They turned off the light and soon zipped across our bow and stayed off our starboard side while they asked us some questions and thanked us for our cooperation. Then John told me about the fish and disposed of it. Who knows when it landed? Without the bright light, we might not have noticed it until morning.

We found a dead squid on the deck yesterday morning with brown splotches all around it. Guess the squid ink didn’t work so well that time. On the other hand, on the other side of the boat we found the messy brown spots without a squid. That one got away. (Since then we’ve learned that squid ink is really, really difficult to remove. Wish us luck with that one.)

We safely anchored at Ibiza about 11 p.m. Sunday, but it was pretty uncomfortable this morning because the swell—heck, it wasn’t swell, it was waves—was coming right into the bay. We didn’t even feel comfortable taking the dinghy off the foredeck so that we could go to town. So when we went into a marina for fuel, we asked how much it was to spend the night. At the beginning of our Mediterranean summer we wouldn’t have considered spending so much, but we’ve been desensitized to the exorbitant rates here, and it was raining and rough out, so we decided to splurge, and now we’re at the dock. With very slow Internet, but…