Position: 44 degrees, 07 minutes north; 154 degrees, 02 minutes west 120 nm day
That Ann. Kaila Vosa strikes again. Of course we’re talking about her speaking with the cargo vessel Eternal Grace. They were the second out of three ships sighted today on their way from Asia to the West Coast.
Even though we're thousands of miles from anywhere, you have to watch for the shipping lanes. In this case, looks like Asia to either SF or LA.
She decided it would be fun to call them out of the blue (literally) and chat. It turned out that “chatting” was not in the Indian bridge officer’s job description and the conversation was very short. More remarkable was the officer’s response when she identified where we were. It seems he had not yet noticed us. We were about 10 miles away, Yikes.
The real excitement was at 0600 during my watch when I spotted a large container ship on the horizon (which is about 12 or so miles right now). I checked the AIS to see its course and whether we would have an issue and found that we were on a collision course. On the open ocean a sailboat has right of way over a motor vessel since we are less maneuverable. Anyway, I called the ship at about 8 miles and got no answer. At this time its speed over ground info disappeared which also meant I no longer had the intercept info. I called again at 6 miles – no answer. Usually we call the ship and between us negotiate how we’re going to cross. And usually the ship is very happy to change course to avoid us. Not this guy. The other data on the AIS showed he was not changing course or speed and indeed my visual showed the same. Well, I may have right of way, but this vessel was 1200 feet long and had a 39 foot draft! It’s draft was deeper than Charisma is long! I’m not taking any chances there since “collision” has two meanings for each of us. For him it means “something went bump”. For us it would mean obliteration. So, I furled the jib and turned 20 degrees toward him. That worked and he went zooming by and I missed him by 1.3 miles. That could be about 7 of his boat lengths. Never heard a word, so I assume one of two things: either they were asleep on the bridge or being bullies by not answering the radio. The name of the vessel is MSC Ines. I have screen shots of the AIS also showing my track where I had to alter course to go behind him. I also kept the lat/lon. When we get back, I’m going to send these to the shipping company and ask them if the bridge even logged the encounter and whether it’s their policy to run down sailboats in the open ocean.
MSC Innes. You can see how I had to alter our course to avoid getting run over.
Other than that, it’s been a pretty nice day. The wind has moderated down to about 12 knots and the seas are almost flat. I think we’re on the west side of the high and soon to start rounding the top. I’m hoping we can start to head east in another 10 hours or so. It’s also nice to be able to sit and stand without hanging on to something for dear life.
OK, the even bigger news today is we turned all the cabin fans off for the first time in eight weeks! Yes, you heard right. Since a week or so before we got to Tahiti it started getting “tropical hot” and we turned on the fans. They have been on 24/7 since then, until today. Of course the flipside to that is we’re using blankets again and wearing layers, but it’s a nice change from the topical heat.