The Fishing is for the birds!

2-4-10, at 2PM, heading south toward Stanley in the Falklands, at S 44 degrees 49.541 mins, and W 56 degrees, 36.335 mins. As you probably know latitude runs from zero at the equator and increases as you travel south to 90 degrees at the South pole. If you check our GPS readings, you’ll see that we have passed the mark for South 40 degrees latitude, and you can tell by reading the longitude, that we moved east from Buenos Aires, and now we’re tacking slight West as we travel south toward the Falklands. When you’ve passed S 40 degrees, our fishing experts tell us that ships pick up all manner of birds. So we sat aft in the sunshine, the worst wind blocked by the ship behind us, and looked at the wide Atlantic panorama behind us, no land in sight, not for these near-sighted eyes. The water was wine dark (like Homer used to write) and an aquamarine highway in our wake, broken by extended white swells, and crashing waves, breaking higher than the morning waves, and in the splashes of dark and light blue color were the silhouettes of birds fishing aft, air surfers tilting sideways in flight with the changing angle of the waves. We’re almost certain it’s the albatross of Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner. With each sweep, it appears they pick a morsel from this oceanic buffet.  JPF