My watch starts at midnight. Within minutes of Mike going to bed, I have to disturb him with a question, then half an hour later I am concerned that we are too close to one of the eight yachts that are around us and get him up again to check. It turns out I am justified in waking him as we are less than half a mile away although we never get any closer.
I sit inside on the computer watching an old TV series for most of my shift. The wind is pathetic, averaging around 8 knots but we get about 4 knots out of that, the auto pilot just about being able to steer to the wind. In the end we resort to putting the engine on for about three hours. By the end of my watch, all the boats that had surrounded us have disappeared over the horizon. Obviously they put their engines on well before us and pulled ahead.
I manage to get back to sleep after my shift and Mike has just bought me a cup of tea when I hear the VHF burst into life and one of the other boats announces that he has just been approached by what looked like two fishing boats with four men on each and one of the men tried to get on his boat, although the presence of the yacht’s flare gun soon saw them off. This yacht is ahead of us and as he gives the position the incident occurred, Mike realises that we are heading for the same spot so he changes course.
It was probably nothing. The guy was probably about to try to make a fast buck by selling fish from one of his boss’ lines but it is better to be safe than sorry. Mike’s evasion tactic just makes good sense. We keep a sharp lookout until we are past the location then head back onto our course.
The day passes slowly as we try to settle into some sort of pattern. When your sleep is broken into small periods at night, you have to take the opportunity of sleeping during the day when you can, so we take it in turns to do this.
There’s very little wind about until the early evening then it picks up quite nicely. I am doing two shifts tonight – 8 to 12 and 4 to 8. At least by the time my first shift starts the stars are out and the Milky Way is really clear. We are actually going too fast at this point – 8.8 knots out of 15 knots of wind – so Mike partly furls the genoa and we settle back to a comfortable 6 knots. He will probably put more genoa out for his own watch but sensibly doesn’t want me to have to fiddle with this in the night.
Photo: Sun setting over the South Pacific
Our position is: 02 deg 20 min S, 93 deg 19 min W
Distance so far: 2827 nautical miles
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