We are at anchor outside of Salalah, Oman. Turns out they do NOT have diesel engine mechanics. Michael and Jason think they can fix the problems, though. Jason has a couple of buddies who can advise us as well.

We are waiting for our agent (you have to pay an agent) to process our paperwork so we can go ashore. We are hoping to be able to stay in “berth 26” – apparently the sole slip reserved for sailboats at this commercial port. The agent says it can take 3-4 work days. Had we known we were coming here – and if we’d had the (literal) bandwidth – we would have sent our documents to him a few days ago so we could have gone ashore right away. Such is life. Sitting on a ⛵ at anchor is still sitting on a ⛵, so . . . .

Two more bird stories. Many days ago, a small blue bird flew inside our boat and got discombobulated in the saloon. We felt bad for it. At one point it flew so fast it stunned itself when it hit the wall. Michael picked it up and put it outside. It flew away shortly thereafter. Whew!

On another day, another seagull-like bird (I don’t know what any of these are) decided to rest on our boat. This one struggled for a bit as the previous one did, but this one got smart and settled on the edge of the trampoline at the bow of the boat. The bird stayed with us for at least 30-45 minutes. For a short time, I felt like we had a pet. ❤️

Two more fish stories. As I mentioned in a previous post, we see lots of flying fish or remnants (scales on the boat) thereof. A day or two ago, there was one on the front of our boat that was still alive. Jason decided to save it so he grabbed one of the long wing-like fins in an attempt to toss it overboard. That caused the fish to flail wildly. Jason’s reaction was lightning fast: he swatted it with his hand when the fish was in midair and the fish flew across the trampoline into the Indian Ocean. I was pretty impressed, largely because I am quite certain I would just have screamed a girly scream and ran back inside.

Warning: vegans, please skip the next paragraph.

We caught a mahi-mahi. That makes three fish thus far, which has enabled us to make our provisions last much longer. We are looking forward to eating mahi-mahi for dinner tonight.

It is nice to have access to Facebook, email, and text again. It took me some time to catch up! We are still sticking with text for our seahike.com posts. We will eventually resize some of our pictures and post them.

We’ve started a long list of things we need to do or buy for the boat to make it habitable and safer. Buying the boat is just the *beginning* of the “spending money” part. 😆😀

We finally affixed the boat’s name and home port to the boat today. We listed the home port as Castle Danger, MN. We like the name. 👍

Ta ta for now!