Franci’s point of View

My Mom has informed us girls that we each need to write something for the blog; my only problem with this is that she only informed us just before she expected us to start writing. I managed to dodge the task for a day or two as I tried to think of something to write, but as you see, I no longer had any more room to dodge.
It’s just amazing how many small animals God put into the sea. At night there are the ‘Red reflectors’ Marike wrote about in her blog entry, sometimes they are everywhere in the water and sometimes they are nowhere. When they are there you can shine a light anywhere on the water and see several reddish-orange lights twinkling back at you as they dance in the waves. But no matter how close the dots get we have never quite been able to work out what they are; tiny fish seem to be the favourite opinion as the lights often jump out of the water and plop back down again; that the lights are more than one type of animal is a close second.
Yesterday the water was smooth with barely a ripple in sight and with only half-hearted, tiny swells, perfect for gazing into the sea. I sat for quite some time on the bowsprit watching tiny jellyfishes float by until they were thrown about by the waves our yacht made. I am very sure that I saw quite a few bluebottles, their tops looking like bubbles on the smooth waves. There were also tiny pinkish jellyfish of whom the biggest was the size of a really big grape, but mostly they were only specks. Then there are also these weird transparent things with a red ball of something in the middle of them; a few days ago one somehow managed to get hooked by our fishing line, and it either did not have a very definite form, or was dragged along for quite a while, because when we reeled it in it was no more than a pulped transparent yuckiness with a red ball of something in the middle, maybe intestines?
I don’t know if it’s just me, but it feels like the few times things fly around, they hit Karin. For example: once while we were looking at the dancing red sparkles we shone the torch a bit more horizontally and to our surprise saw the outline of a small Petrel hovering over the water ( a petrel is a small sea bird about the size of . . . an India Myna. They are true ocean birds as they only go to land when they breed and can otherwise not be seen unless you yourself can no longer see land). Anyway, so we pinpointed this petrel not so far from our boat, and the petrel proceeded to fly towards the light and straight into Karin. Not sure who got the bigger fright, Karin or the petrel; if noise was any judge then it was Karin, because she is not frugal when it comes to squealing. The poor confused petrel landed on the deck and then managed to go over the side and onto the sea, where it probably sat for quite a while trying to figure out just what happened back there.
. Only a few flying fish have landed on our deck yet, and none have been close to colliding with any of us; but I think that if just one fish in this entire trip would fly into anyone, that person will be Karin.