Hello all,
Just a short one as we have been trying to sail fast to pass our ocean sprint finish gate.
It was a nice little race within the race with WTC Logistics, (Hi, Rich) and Seattle, (Hi, Dave), across the line. If it was a finish line we would have been third, but I was thinking more about where I wanted to be for the next stage of the race, rather than getting points in the ocean sprint, as I don't think we were up there.
It was an interesting night sailing through the first wind hole, big shifts and all that sort of stuff. We sailed past a lot of drifting buoys. They had AIS beacons on them so easy to miss. There was one that didn't though, so imagine our surprise as we passed it. It decided to shine a torch in our eyes, anyway we said hi.
Another interesting thing happened. I was just going off watch when we saw a ship carrying dangerous goods on a very close, to close point of approach. They didn't have a name displayed so I tried calling using its MMSI number, but no answer. As Ha Long, Viet Nam was close by, I called up Josh to see if he could see us on AIS, he could so we knew we were transmitting ok.
Josh then very kindly tried hailing them for us as he was closer but, still no answer. They had changed course though, so I went to bed leaving James to monitor the situation.
At the next shift changeover, our dangerous goods carrying ship turned out to be a very small fishing boat. I guess if I had looked at his ship details, I would have seen that he input his beam as 100 metres. That would have made us alert to the fact that not all his info was correct, so we laughed, and then laughed about the music that was playing on channel 16. At least there was no singing as that also happens in these parts.
Anyway, it is beautiful sailing. The moon as it rose last night was amazing, I have been doing watches with TC as watch leader and she has three new joiners on her watch. Last night, they were awesome. We had sails going up and all sorts of nonsense happening and all went without a hitch. Melodie's watch keeps the boat moving nicely too, so all very happy.
Anyway, this has turned into a long blog.
Where's the romance?
Love youse all,
Wendo, James, Kevin and team