Cruising with Soggy Paws

Cruising with Soggy Paws 2009

Soggy Paws is a 44' CSY Sailboat. In 2007, we set sail on a 10 year around the world cruise.

Saturday, August 1, 2009

Anti-Bird Device

When we got back on Soggy Paws from 6 weeks in Peru, the boat was fine. Except the deck was completely befowled with bird-poo.

Dave spent about 2 hours scrubbing it down. But at dusk... the pesky bird came home to roost... on the top of our mast. It was a huge Man-O-War bird. We banged the rigging and it flew away. But during dinner, we heard a 'splat' on deck. Yup, he was back, and had just splatted Dave's clean deck.

So the next day, Dave made an 'anti-bird device'. He went up the mast and took down our wind arrow... it's the first thing to go when big birds start roosting on your mast. And then he made a template of the mast top, using an old plastic placemat.

The end result was a plywood 'cap' for the top of the mast (with a hole cut out for the light and lightning dissipator), that has long screws sticking up. He also tied a piece of string from the back of the rod that the masthead fly was on, up to the top of the trilight.

Update: August 10...So far (in 10 days), no more poopy birds!

Labels: Ecuador, Maintenance

Written at 9:33 AM by Sherry.

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