Seventy nautical miles off Britain's northeast coast, with no land in sight and a 1,805-mile ocean race still underway, a British Army sailing crew picked up an unscheduled passenger: a barn owl, soaked and exhausted, that had apparently run out of places to land.
The bird first tried settling on a crew member's head aboard the yacht Fujitsu British Soldier, competing in the 50th Anniversary RORC Round Britain and Ireland Race, before tumbling into the water three separate times. On its fourth attempt, it finally collapsed onto the deck, where sailors wrapped it in a towel to warm it up. "We thought we'd lost her, but she kept fighting her way back up and to the boat," Sergeant Mark Petherbridge of 2nd Battalion, The Parachute Regiment, recalled to France 24.
The crew initially named their stowaway "Little Reg," then revised it to "Little Regina" once a closer look settled the question of her sex. Skipper Major Will Naylor radioed the update in to race officials with characteristic understatement.
We have an extra crew member for the latter parts of the race: an exhausted barn owl that we are nursing back to health.
— Major Will Naylor, skipper, Fujitsu British Soldier
What followed was a small logistical operation layered on top of an ongoing offshore race: the crew coordinated with the Barn Owl Trust, Marine and Wildlife Rescue and the Caister Independent Lifeboat to arrange a handoff near Great Yarmouth, all without pulling out of the competition, according to gCaptain. Little Reg was ultimately delivered to the RSPCA's East Winch Wildlife Centre for recovery, while the Army Sailing Association crew pressed on toward the finish line at Cowes.
They got there in 12 days, 21 hours and change, finishing 18th overall among 33 boats and 182 sailors from 22 countries — a respectable result made more memorable by the several hours spent, mid-race, drying out a bird of prey. Race organizers have not said how, exactly, a barn owl — a species that rarely strays far from land — ended up that deep into open water in the first place, though exhaustion and disorientation during a long-distance flight are the leading theories among the wildlife groups who took her in.