Day 6 The invisible fleet
Moonshiner
Sun 14 May 2023 18:35
COG 245 SOG 4.2
Right so the last 24hrs has been somewhat of a challenge. We have been essentially beating into anything from 10 to 20kts. Annoyingly the forecast has been grossly inaccurate (deja vu) which was predicting a favourable wind just forward of the beam. We’ve spent our time between sailing and motor sailing bashing into an ever building spiky sea.
This is actually the first time that we’ve had to beat hard into a swell for any considerable amount of time and I’m well and truly over it! The main problem is we have to keep all the hatches shut so there is absolutely no air downstairs, what with the 35degrees currently in the cabin, makes for a fairly inhospitable place. Also the degree of heel is fairly impressive, to keep Moonshiners 20tons powered up enough to push through the swell, she needs enough canvas up, and with her tumblehome hull shape, she finds her comfortable resting position at around 30degrees tilt. Anyway, sounds like I’m complaining, well I am a bit but seriously, where are these trade winds?!
The most interesting event that spiced up our night occurred at 2am. Ryan was on watch and noticed a bright light dead ahead. Then within a few minutes there appeared to be about 8 white lights, all in a line, separated with an equal distance (roughly 1nm). The spookiest thing was that none of them were showing on AIS or radar, despite them being really rather close. My first thoughts were….pirates?! Given we hadn’t seen a vessel in days, this really was bizarre. Ryan turned 90degrees to port so as not to close in on them whilst Ben radioed “all ships east of Galapagos”….no response. We wondered if they were military or maybe fishing vessels. Anyway, I’m afraid the ending to this story is rather dull as eventually they moved away from us and disappeared.
We are in the process of planning a crossing the equator/half way to NZ party, trouble is, none of us can even bring ourselves to even put the kettle on so might have to postpone that one!
Less than 200nm to go.
Katie
PS. 2 booby birds now on pulpit
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