Pushing South with the Butterflies

We had a nice stay in Connecticut and got most of the items on “the list” all taken care of. The washer/dryer was fixed by the captain and his assistant who could get both hands and one set of eyes on a few parts that eluded a normal sized worker. Kim was happy to be able to do laundry again on board and Emily was feeling pretty important helping Daddy.

The Bon Voyage party was enjoyed by all and it was good seeing old friends and co-workers. We also said goodbye to our trusty truck as we pushed away from Connecticut soil.

But we are not alone in our trip south. Over the past few weeks we have noticed Monarch butterflies flying overhead, landing nearby or sometimes even far out at sea. Sometimes it is one or two, and other times it is more of a steady stream of 10 or twenty. Like many observations with a seven year old aboard, such a curiosity becomes an opportunity for a home schooling lesson.

We found that Monarch butterflies have one of the world's most fascinating migration paths. Every fall, thousands of the black-and-orange butterflies fly west to their wintering grounds in California and Mexico, covering the trees there with their bright shimmering wings. For centuries, people puzzled over exactly where the millions of Monarchs that spend their winters in Mexico and California came from. But in 1937, a researcher began putting wing tags on the butterflies, allowing him to track some of the travelers. In the 1950s, he expanded the project, enlisting more than 3,000 volunteers across the country in his Insect Migration Association. For more than 20 years, the volunteers helped track the marked insects, contacting him whenever they found or saw a marked Monarch.

Many of our friends have been having problems visualizing the speed of our trawler and how we can go so far on so little fuel. In all this research I found that many butterflies travel more than 2000 miles and average more than 5 mph in this arduous migration. There you have it. Everyone knows that butterflies do not travel in a straight line. They flutter back and forth and up and down and they get caught up in storms. Therefore they must travel faster than that to average 5 mph on this 3 month journey. Based on this data and the fact that they will beat me south this year, I have concluded that even butterflys go faster than our trawler.

So next time you see a butterfly flitting past, Dear reader, you can think to yourself, the Emily Grace goes slower than that!

Tom