Making good progress on re-doing the bathroom on the boat. I have been putting several coats of paint on all the wood and had to let it be drying, as well as adding a layer of epoxy fiberglass to the tank that leaked, and re-caulking the seams. I think it is going to turn out great.  Whatv do you think of this possible new configuration?

　　

Today I helped my dock neighbor friend Mike and his wife Suzy finish moving stuff out of their apartment and into the new town home they bought.

Tonight I am at anchor outside Dana. The seas are a bit rolly tonight, but my newly reconfigured stove worked great, cooked dinner with no boiling danger or drama..

As the sun was going down and I sat in the cockpit sipping tea, I was once again marveling at the pelicans. They are my most favorite critter out here. They are a big bird, 6 foot wingspan, with a long neck they usually hold crooked in, and that long massive bill with the big lose skin gullet thing hanging under. They are brown with sometimes a white head. (there is also a white pelican that is a big freshwater bird, which does not dive for its food as described below.

They frequently fly together in line formation with 5 or 6 other pelicans, frequently gliding just above the water, wing tips almost toughing the water. As they fly along and the sea swell rises up in or along their path, they rise along with it, 1 at a time rising up and over as they each come to it. They are flying close together so it is really cool to watch them all swell up and over the water swell as if they were a single organism.

Watching them fish is a real treat. I can sit and watch them for hours (and I have!). I never seem to tire of it. They fly about 20 -30 feet above the water and when they spy a fish down below, (I am not sure how deep of a fish they can see, ) they then pause, hover for a moment and then dive straight down and grab the fish in their huge bill. The dive is really cool. They seem to curve down in a ½ corkscrew type pattern into the water, using their wings to control themselves until the very last moment when they then extend out that long neck and tuck their wings making themselves a tight hydrodynamic arrow into the water. I don’t know if they ever miss, but they always seems to be swallowing a fish when they come up. You can see it wiggling in that hangy skin chin sack. I feel sorry for them because there always seems to be a swarm if gulls that attack them as soon as they surface and try to get the fish away from them. There will be 4 or 5 gulls going after them, actually standing on the pelicans head and pecking at them, and the pelicans have to shake them off and swallow while they fly off looking for the next catch.

Frequently, as was tonight right by my boat, there will be a big school of fish concentrated in an small area with many hundreds of pelicans feeding on them, and many hundreds more gulls scavenging after the pelicans. It was quite a show tonight, with dozens of pelicans diving all at once in a very small area, and many many more circling around overhead looking for a fish to dive on. It is really interesting in that sometimes they will be flying quite fast, as if they have somewhere else to go, but they then make a very fast immediate dive. It doesn’t even look like they were looking down, and certainly didn’t hover to zone in on the fish down below. They just seem to know there is a fish there to go after and they go into a dive for it!

Then it seemed like they all got some sort of signal like it was time to be done and they all flew back to the rocks on the jetty where they perch much of the day.

If I didn’t already have a really cool hat with No Bad Days printed on it, I would be tempted to name my boat Los Pelicanos (The Pelican in Spanish.). Perhaps I will have to get another boat just so I can name it!


PS pics from Long beach

Approaching the big city

　
the secret fortress of Dr No (Whites island