Day 46 More sailing

Sights at sea
Position - S 11º57 X W 143º54 (@ 0500 UT 4/21)
Sailing - Last night we encountered more squalls with winds over 30 knots but this is now within the envelope of a normal day at sea.
Kurt has re-installed the lee cloth on his bed after falling out 3 times the night before. If you sleep on the high side of the boat - in this case the left or port side - the bed is always tilted toward the floor. To prevent falling out, a heavy fabric is tucked under the mattress and tied to fittings on the ceiling. The weight of the sleeper keeps the cloth from being pulled out thus preventing the fall-on-the-floor phenomenon.
Birds - One of the delights of sailing is to watch the birds. Near any harbor the pelicans put on a show of diving for fish. This maneuver is about as graceful as watching a ten ton dump truck dropped from a hundred feet. It is hard to imagine they do this on purpose.
The frigate birds are much more graceful with their angled wings and forked tails. They can soar endlessly without flapping their wings. At one of the anchorages we watched them swooping just above the water to catch flying fish in mid air. Then they would gain altitude, swallow the the fish and return to the surface for a quick drink on the fly.
Occasionally we see a graceful white bird which I think is a sooty tern. They are slight of build and rapid flyers but always seem to be in a hurry to get somewhere.
My favorite are the boobies. They are very graceful and soar just above the wave tops. Our boat must disturb the bait fish as the boobies will spend hours making graceful figure eights around us.