13th May - Bugs on Board (by Leighton)

Cathy hates spiders on the boat. These are a few very small spiders and I don't mind them. After all they do catch mosquitos and I enjoy sitting in the cockpit while reading a book, pausing occasionally to watch them (a bit like fishermen mending their nets) cleaning and repairing their webs in amongst the various bits of rope and safety gear on the back of the boat. Any bug that can produce a material stronger than steel at room temperature and do so out of its backside on a diet of bugs, has got to demand some admiration. After I complained about the indiscrimate destruction of webs and flicking of the residents into the sea to become fish food - Cathy did conceed a bit of ground, "...they can all be put in a box and taken ashore if you want to save them!". Its not like we live in a haunted house. My crew of tiny spiders produce delicate small cobwebs that are full of diamonds in the morning dew and occasionally a dead mosquito. I like that.

Since I mention mosquitos - Unfortunately Mozzies like the same type of climate as us humans so when the weather is at its best the they are about. I am certain these little beasts are the source of many vampire tales: They come out at night, fly through the sky, suck your blood while you sleep and return to their hiding places before sunrise. We have recently had to deploy additional defenses (see picture below) and although it is a bit like something out of "Sleeping Beauty", but we haven't had a bite in the last two nights.














Mini-Ants - we both draw the line at ants. We are not sure where they have come from or where they might live on the boat. Like the spiders they are tiny - (unfortunately the spiders don't seem to do ants) and even though we bump them off when we see them, the odd ant keeps reappearing so we think there might be a small colony somewhere on board. We keep looking out for an anthill to appear on deck - nothing so far.

Dragon Flies - While we are doing bugs we might as well cover the 'mystery of the dragon flies'. Several times we have been visited by colourful dragon Flies - the same kind you can see buzzing around the water plants along any river bank in the UK. The mystery is that each time we were visited by dragon flies we were far out at sea - some 80-100 miles from land! After a rest an hour or so, they would take off and continue their journey - from and to where a mystery.

Now for our "Bug of the Month" competition:


Answers on a postcard please. Not sure where it is now (might still be on the boat somewhere? In a spiders stomach? - we can be hopeful ) but it is certainly not in our book, "The Natural History of The Mediterranean". A complete mystery - and I have never seen a bug like it. New species perhaps? However we did see this thing in the water earlier in the day, there might be a connection...?