unspeakably great honor of meeting two today. The first was tangled in
some fishing bouy contraption,old floats that was just drifting. We
spotted the bouys and on closer inspection saw the turtle towing this
flotilla of floats around with him. We slowly moved the boat into
position. Eduard first dived in but the tutrle was swimming a bit to
fast for him. Once we got a bit closer Steven dived in, got hold of the
bouys and swam back to the boat, dragging the turtle behind him. Both
motors were off and the diving ladder was down making for easy access
onto the boat. I passed Steven the scissors and with some assistance
from Nick and Eduard Steven eventually managed to free the turtle. What
an amazing feeling to see this turtle diving down deep, something he was
not able to do for who knows how long. It was not all as easy as that as
the turtle was also moving his flippers around making it tricky. His big
bony jaws hissing made us a bit wary but we succeeded in the end.
I just started the motor and decided to cut the motors again and all of
us had a seashower, soaping ourselves and washing the soap off with
seawater and finally rinsing the seawater off with fesh water. We have
got some way to go still and using the fresh water very sparingly. Quite
a few barnacles have attached themselves under our hulls and Eduard
volunteered to scrape them off with a plastic spatula. Just then we
spotted another turtle swimming towards us. He came right up to the
boat. There is now wind, good current and we were just drifting with the
current. A very friendly turtle this one turned out to be, swimming
leisure around the boat and scraping his back against the hull.He had no
problem with us touching him, swimming with him, and even enjoyed us
scrubbing hgis back with a scrubbing brush, coming back for more every
time. We managed to take some excellent footage and had a most blessed
and sacred experience, to be so close and able to touch this symbol of
good fortune. I was laughing at Steven and the boys speaking like the
turtles in Finding Nemo - The fish asking the tutle how old he is
and the turtle answering -"Hey dude, 150 and still young", speaking slow
and deep.
You must have seen some tv documentaries where they show that these
turtles travel around the globe and come back to exactly the same beach
they were born at years afterwards to come and lay there eggs. And at
the right moment with spring high tides and full moon the small turtles
hatch and make a dash for the safety of the sea. Obviously there are
many predators awaiting this huge event and many don't make it. But
enough of them gets to mature and carry on this cycle, probably for
longer than what man has been on the planet. Nick and myself were just
mentioning how time takes on a whole different meaning out here, or
perhaps no meaning at all.
Well, we certainly believe that the turtles will bring us some good
fortune as far as wind is concerned. We are about 70nm away from the
latitude where we are expecting good winds, according to our weather
files and our charts. Perhaps this is why the Chinese thought of turtles
as bearers of good fortune. They are normally found on the edges of the
currents and if we did not had the modern technology, we would also have
sworn that the turtles brought us good fortune when the wind starts
building for the first time in weeks. Our position currently
is 06*38'S/101*52'W.
Take good care
Captain Paul
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