This One Is for the Birds: An Update From ‘Cetacea’

West Coast cruisers James Lane and Dena Hankins have been out cruising for over two decades. They’ve been living in the USVI and wrote in about birds, and taking flight for an opportunity at the Panama Canal. 

Soooo, the crew of the electric Baba 30 SV/SN-E Cetacea, James, Dena, and Beluga Greyfinger, the cat, are officially underway once again! We’ve been offered an amazing opportunity in Panama, so we’re sailing there as soon as we get a decent 10-day forecast out of Windy.

But, man, am I going to miss the resident avians of St. Thomas, USVI!

The pelicans who dive between the giant sport-fishing boats and the docks they’re moored to are so fascinating. I can’t imagine that shit ever getting old.

The royal terns, who started showing up just a few miles east of Martinique, really are the very definition of royalty at sea, and they swooped and dove around us all throughout the Caribbean islands. And then there are the boobies. The big, brown, blue-billed boobies are quite a sight to behold. They vie for position on the spreaders while offshore, and catch free rides on the ferries between all the Virgin Islands. They are incredible fishers, handsome as all hell, and very nice neighbors. Another resident of the North Atlantic Caribbean chain is my favorite of all the flying freaks, the magnificent frigatebirds. They have this tiny little body, a long, split tail, a sharp, slightly curved beak, and a seven-and-a-half-foot wingspan! This is an incredible animal. They spend most of their lives in the air and at sea. These giants would swoop down and catch flying fish just inches off the surface of the ocean between the Cabo Verde Islands of West Africa and the entirety of the Caribbean island chain. They, the magnificents, are nonstop entertainment when sailing east to west across the Atlantic Ocean.

I’ve been a photographer of our natural world for 46 years, but I have never really considered myself a bird photographer. Let’s face it, those freakishly fast little fuckers are hard to shoot without a serious investment in modern lens technology, so you just have to catch them at the perfect moment, and how often does that happen? When we were in Eagle Harbor, on Bainbridge Island, Washington, I could only watch in awe as the bald eagles caught the baby salmon and got chased through the sailing rigs of Winslow Wharf by the squalling hordes of overfed gulls, while the pelicans of Alameda, only 800 miles to the south, never failed to blow me away with their grace aloft and their goofiness on land.

As we sail our tiny electric sailboat to Central America, we are actually thrilled by the idea of all the new avians we will meet along the way; but first, let’s get the rig aloft.

James Lane, SV/SN-E Cetacea