lundi 21 septembre 2009

38°38N 23°13W at 2100 160608


151M in the last 24 hours, great after the 108M of the 24 hours before. Mostly under genniker until the wind went to 20kts... We are in much more complicated weather, we could go north or south or straight. The high seems to be everywhere at one point of another and often in all three places at the same time. I’ve opted for the direct route and we are beating into 6 kts of wind on a flat gray sea toward a bank of thunder clouds. The wind will run out sometime in the next 24 hours but when? I am beat today, up most of the night doing putting in reefs, and I forgot to eat breakfast till 1500. The combination put me in a rotten mood. I made pasta for dinner in the pressure cooker - not perfect but not bad at all. I made a zucchini sauce, added some water, threw in a bad of rigatoni and pressurized it for about 5 minutes. Next time I’ll try 4. Mona the wind vane is back in service the wind is expected to do a 360° in the next couple of days - I hope I can sleep some tonight!!!!! The wind out of the north has us all wearing clothes for the first time, still no socks but sweaters are out, leggings and a hat has been seen.

We were passed by a cargo on its way to Quebec doing 16kts in exactly the opposite direction to us. I don’t remember if I’ve talked about what we are doing about keeping these guys at a distance. Basically we have 3 tools at our disposal : our eyes, the radar and the AIS, each of which has its qualities and its defaults. For distance we can see a ship that is transponding at around 24 miles depending on its size and the sea conditions; then comes the radar which will start to pick up a clear blob at around 12 miles, then come our eyes at around 6 to 10 miles depending on conditions. AIS is the best but you have to have it on, have the computer on and be sitting in front of it - this is impossible because they consume too much electricity and I can’t sit here all the time. The radar is the same, eats too much electricty and you have to be there. So if the conditions are good (which means good visibility, good maneuverability and some one at the helm that keeps their eyes open) we rely on eyes first when off shore; when conditions are shitty or we are closer to land or shipping lines than I have to be close to one or the other of the electronic means of visibility. Next question is what happens when see a ship? If it is far away and I have ascertained that there is no risk we go back to whatever we were doing, if there is a danger or I don’t know, I fire up the computer with the AIS, and maybe the radar. If there definitly is danger on the AIS and or the radar, I try to contact the other ship to let them know that I see them and that they should see us and hello hello. Mostly they don’t move much and we do. Usually the fact of seeing them early means that the course change for us is minimal. At night it is more complicated because there are fewer people around to keep a watch, because I try to sleep a few hours and because it is easy to mistake ships for raising stars. For the moment I’m not convinced that they see us on their AIS receivers, we have been seen on some of their radar screens, I have very seldom seen other sail boats on my radar screen. Most of these cargos are moving at around 15kts. Toward each other means their 15 and our 5 makes 20 kts, if we see them 20 miles away we have lets say 10 minutes to get all this clear, 12 minutes to be a mile out of the way and 40 minutes to play with. If we only see them on the radar 12 miles away we have 10 minutes to play with, if we only just see them 6 miles away we have 18 minutes, we need 12 to be out of here and 5 to decide which makes... move fast, be sure and keep your eyes open. Luckily most boats are not coming from head on, which gives us more time and very very few are really on a collision course, but there have been enough to keep us on our toes. The best solution is to have another source of electricity, keep the computer and the AIS running and wire some kind of alarm to the system.