Delighted to start this post by stating I haven’t encountered a cockroach for some weeks now, not to tempt sod too much, but a minor hurrah!  However, his friend, the mosquito, has recently surfaced in abundance.  I can only assume this is because the temperature has dropped slightly, or perhaps just because I am no longer on permanent cockroach location duty, this little beast is being very pesky.

We don’t usually have to endure them on the boats, which is a huge plus, and an unexpected one due to the amount of water around us!  There are a couple of marinas with very efficient wind protection – which they sell as a highlight, and certainly makes for a less interrupted sleep (squeaky boats and creaky ropes and water smacking is an acoustic which takes a little time to adjust to) – however, the wind is your friend in the matter of mosquitoes.  Without wind the mozzies delight, the water is still, and you have to either sleep with all hatches closed and stifling air (and the potential for your shoes to set off the smoke alarm) or fully expect to have at least one of these mongrels in your cabin.  Then there is no sleep.  I have tried to offer up a sacrificial leg, in the hope they will take their fill and leave, but no such luck; why do they insist on bothering your face?!  Why do they pester some people more than others?

And the biggest question of all; why do they exist?  Is there some bigger purpose to the mosquito in the animal kingdom?  And if not, why haven’t we worked out how to extinguish them by now?

In a particularly relaxed hour of downwind sailing the other day I sought to answer some of these questions, good old internet.

Caveat: Internet based information to follow, likely to be only partly fact.

– Jurassic Park was correct, these guys have been around since the dinosaurs.
– Over 3,500 different strains have been identified which is why it’s so difficult to get rid of them.
– Recent attempts to cull have included breeding and releasing swarms of sterile males.
– The males don’t bite, they simply hang around with their buddies, drinking nectar, listening out for a female to impregnate.  As I understand it there was a very accurate representation of this in A Bug’s Life.
– Females can live for up to a month, males five to seven days.
– The females make the noise, the males have ears (or the fly equivalent).
– In her lifetime a female can lay up to 200 eggs.
– The abdomen of a female mosquito can hold three times her own weight in blood: once she has consumed a “blood meal” the protein is used to produce eggs.
– Egg production takes about seven days, after which the female will seek out another host.
– They are attracted to CO2, hence the face bothering, and the more you exhale the more they are attracted – so darting round the room weilding a flyswat just makes you even more appealing.
– They are also attracted to type O blood, pregnancy hormones – and beer.

G&Ts or wine all round then!