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Ngahue IV - Ngahue IV - A night with 2 different kinds of encounters



During our 6th night at sea we had two very different kinds of encounters with other vessels. The first one you'd probably end up by saying "typical yachtie". Around 2 a.m., popping out of nowhere, comes a sailing boat: no lights, no AIS, but on a very close course with us. In the dark you could make out his sails, but it wasn't possible to judge from them in which direction this other boat was going. When their mast-top light was suddenly turned on, this didn't offer much clarification on the boat's course, as successively green, red and white shone in our direction. Fortunately, this boat then made off and the lights went extinguished again...
A few hours later, just before dawn, the cargo ship Gentle Seas approached us. Initially with a CPA of over 2 miles, their closest point of approch slowly diminished to a few hundred metres. As we got closer, Gentle Seas and we both changed our course a degree or two and we passed eachother at 0.7 miles. Gentle Seas was perfectly lit, perfectly steered (we, on the contrary, do tend to wander a bit with our Furuno autopilot incapable of maintaining a steady course to wind) and perfectly behaved.
Two very different types of encounters to have at night: we by far prefer the second kind!!!

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