Saturday 14th November: Progress towards Madeira
Awelina of Sweden
James Collier
Sat 14 Nov 2015 16:59
We're well over half way to Madeira and still plodding along. The forecast was for light winds today after the good breeze of yesterday, and for a better breeze again tomorrow but we are currently motoring again. Sunny and quite warm, but unfortunately no fish. We did see a turtle this afternoon.
Shortly after our last post, and after we had successfully set up the poled out jib with effective chafe protection and fair-leads we were bowling along comfortably at about 7.5 knots under full main and poled out jib when several AIS position indicators popped up. One of them was for a very large freighter, the 'CAP SPENCER' heading our way, in fact heading straight towards us on a reciprocal course. In that situation both are supposed to alter a little to starboard, although since we were under sail in principle only he was obliged to alter. We made such a small adjustment to starboard anyway but the ship did not and we would still be far too close for safety. So we decided to call the ship on the VHF. Having answered and switched to a working channel when we asked them their intentions they they just stopped answering. At this point we now needed to make an emergency course alteration to get out of their track (even though as a sailing vessel we have the right of way, and in any case BOTH ships on a reciprocal course should take action). But it's not so quick and simple when going down-wind as it means going onto the foredeck which is pitching and rolling and wrestling with the pole plus 5 ropes all with quite a bit of force in the jib, which means that if one lets the force off the sail then flaps like mad, trying to knock the person off the deck and into the sea. James harnessed up and went forward to manipulate the pole and the ropes and Fe stayed behind to steer and furl the jib. As always when in a hurry it's not so simple and In the end we lifted the pole and furled the jib with all the extra rope still attached. By now it was getting dark and we'd been working flat-out for 35 mins as the blasted freighter went past fairly close. James practiced his Morse code signalling with the Aldis lamp by sending a little personal message for the OOW: probably pointless as we don't suppose the sort of officers employed by that company are either sufficiently trained to understand it or sufficiently motivated to look out of the windows anyway. It was tea-time after all.
After this, the large ships just kept on coming and we realised we must be crossing several major shipping lanes here as the "convoy" of tankers and freighters had us dodging and weaving all through the night until about 3am when the density reduced. We didn't dare to re-set the poled out jib which would have increased our speed and comfort which was a shame. So maybe In retrospect having to get the pole system down before dusk did us a favour in that we now know that we need to refine the way it's deployed. Another maintenance job!
Apart from that it was actually rather a pleasant night: no moon (and at one point no ships!) but so many stars that it was hard to pick out the usual bright constellations such as Orion and the Plough. Dawn when it came was fast; none of this gentle glow in the east, more like the tropics a "here's the light" immediately followed by "here is the sun". We realised from this we are quite a long way South now, opposite Morocco and the Sahara actually hence the heat this afternoon as well.
Shortly after breakfast we made another good and clear contact with Jon Hudson via SSB. We had been very concerned about the storms in the UK (none forecast for here) and the after effect of "Abigail". However Jon also told us the news about the dreadful events in Paris which puts our issues with freighters etc into the completely trivial category. We hope all at home are safe from the storms and flooding we're also thinking of the poor souls in France.