On the Drunken Duck

Before meeting Petra, I imagined she would be short, fat, and with gigantic glasses that hide the failing of human eyesight. I thought she'd look like an intelligent duck, only quite a bit larger. In reality, she is tall, slim and reasonably fit. Her only problem is the lack of feathers. Not that being chubby is bad. It just stops one from flying, and from being free. Even without the marked duck resemblance, I conclude Petra looks OK by duck standards.

We gathered in a circle around her to make a plan. The boat had to be off in an hour, which left enough time for her to get a few last minute provisions that were shaped by her new and undemanding traveling companions, which she, finally, accepted gracefully. In the meantime, we could go on the ship and make ourselves confortable, and as invisible as possible until she could explain us to her crew-mates. However, we'd be safer there than on land since the port is quite a busy place and has no vegetation to hide in.

The Drunken Duck was a wide catamaran called "Regina Maria" after Romania's last queen. It was painted in light blue. The bridge up front gave it the appeareance of a beakless duck. We all circled down. Athena was the fastest. She quickly perched on a high bar and fell asleep. Narcisa and I hid under a large antena. "It is a nice place for a nest" commented Narcisa. Cawlin and Codrin perched on top of the antena oblivious to the fact that it might obstruct the ship's TV. Philip and Penelope perched under a solar panel a little further away. Soon Petra came back with a large box and a large bag of frozen stuff. She said it was for Athena and hoped there were no live rats on board. Most of them had been poisoned. The anchor was lifted and the boat sailed off.

Fit to its name, the drunken duck moves slowly in port. It has a large turning radius. Petra explained it is powered by the Hydrogen in the sea water. It extracts the hydrogen from the sea, using a combination of solar and wind power, and converts it back to electricity to power its twin electric motors. So, we need to stop when we run out of food, but we don't need to stop to refuel. Petra installed some fishing rods to supply us with food. Philip and Penelope still have plenty of bugs to catch. Petra points out that the live bugs remind us than Romania does not kill bugs as agressively as other countries do that claim to be environmentally friendly.

As soon as we got out at sea, the drunken duck increased its speed since now it has more wind to power its electric generator for extracting the hydrogen from the water. When we wanted to go for a swim, Narcisa suggested using the bow-wave in front of the ship like the dolphins. It will also make it easy to return to the ship when we needed to.