In this edition: glasnost sailing style,
guilty pleasures, the Hobit?
Last night was a busy one for each of our
watches- we run 3 hours during the evening: 19:00 – 22:00; 22:00 – 01:00; 01:00
– 04:00 and 04:00 – 07:00, thereafter each watch is 4 hours. In any event, it
was an entertaining evening—that, is if you don’t get out very often. Not
surprisingly, we aren’t right now.
On Mike’s watch, he had the pleasure of
following the attempts of one of our fellow ARC-ees? ARC-ers? ARC-ists? to let a
cargo ship know that he was directly in line, about 45 mins from the cargo ship,
that he was sailing and could the cargo ship kindly make a slight adjustment to
avoid a fender bender, where the sail boat would lose big time. Displaying the
patience of someone knowing they had much more to gain from this conversation,
the ARC ship repeatedly radioed to the cargo ship, asking for confirmation that
the cargo ship could see the yacht and was prepared to shift course. After
numerous attempts, the cargo ship did respond but it was clear that the person
on the end of the radio was on the worst watch of the evening for a reason. With
the distances closing in, the ARC boat persisted until the person the watch went
and got someone more senior. Even then, there was an lengthy discussion that
consisted of the ARC boat asking “Do you see me?” and the cargo ship
replying “We don’t see you” despite the ARC boat having both AIS and a radar
reflector. Finally, the cargo ship made an adjustment to avoid something that
they could not see- speaking volumes of the persuasiveness of our fellow
yachtie. At this point, you would expect the ARC boat to hang up his VHF
after such a frustrating experience and never want to talk to the boat again—not
so. Following the change in course, the captain of the cargo ship and the
yachtie had an extended conversation about why there were so many sail boats out
in the (not quite yet) middle of the Atlantic. Truly British diplomacy at its
best.
Slightly less impressive of our fellow ARC
participants is a tendency for boats to go “dark” at night. Yes, it is true that
it gets dark very early in this part of the world, but, what we are speaking of
is boats who turn off their AIS systems at night and behave in a manner not
fitting of proper sea-people. We had seen this on the first night of the rally
when boats chose to use their engines at one stage as the wind had died. To
avoid detection and therefore not have to pay the time penalty, they turn off
their AIS and ghost through the fleet- tricky, eh? Last night in Kevin’s watch,
he had been watching a handful of boats (or is it a school? a pod? ) that were
in close proximity to his location. One of the boats was running in a parallel
course behind the good ship Libeccio, but nothing terribly exciting. Just as the
other boat was getting into a potentially interesting (meaning, possible
collision course) the other boat turns off his AIS, forcing us to switch to
radar to track his course. His intentions became very clear when he cut across
our bow less than 100m away- we know this because, notwithstanding there is no
moon and it is pitch black out here at night, we could track his navigation
lights and see the glow of his instruments. Completely unnecessary and leaving
us having to take evasive action under sail and wondering if he should have been
on the bridge of that cargo ship doing the dog shift in reflection of his
intellectual capacity. Ok, so we didn’t
actually have to wonder about that answer.
Much as in the Hobbit (how is that for a lead in), we the ARC participants
leave together on a trek from Las Palmas that will take a long time (longer for
some of us) and involve more than a few adventures along the way. Like the
Hobbit, there seem to be fewer and fewer of us. At least, those that we can see
on our navigational devices. In fact, while writing this blog, I can no longer
see any of the 170+ other boats. Was it something we said? Although we are
reliably told that it is a very large ocean out there, that they are there just
over the horizon , that nothing sinister is happening and we will all have a big
reunion in Rodney Bay—one can’t help to wonder.(cue music from Jaws)
Do you ever do something that you know isn’t really good for you but you
just can’t help yourself? Whether it be the guilty pleasure of one more
chocolate, that wee dram of whiskey as a night cap or, in our case, flying
Izzy. What, you may well ask is an Izzy and how does one fly such a thing
while sailing? Izzy is our pet name for our Parasail- it is similar to a
spinnaker but has a hole in the middle where they have inserted a part of a
parachute—get it, Para(chute) Sail? In any event it is manufactured by Iztec, so
we cleverly have called ours Izzy (if we think this is clever perhaps are the
ones that should be on the bridge of that cargo ship mentioned earlier!). In any
event, Izzy is brilliant when you are going more or less down wind- less so when
going across the wind. Today’s winds were perfect for using (this is the
flying bit) Izzy except the wind was not really going in the best direction for
us and we had sails that would have been better to use. With a collective age
well beyond 250 yrs, we did the mature thing and... raised Izzy. It was a
glorious afternoon of sailing despite it taking us further south than we had
intended to go at this stage. Oh well, we didn’t want to get to St Lucia that
quickly anyways.
For the gastronomes out there, we feasted on a dinner of salmon
steaks prepared by Chef Mike that were pan fried with a little dash of salt and
pepper. Add to that some rice and a green salad and we think we have covered off
the major food groups.
Just enough time for a quick cuppa and that’s my watch done.
Best wishes,
The Crew of Libeccio