Post-call.
Fleck
Mon 7 May 2012 07:45
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Monday, May 7th 2012
Position 5:34.5S 106:30.68E Alongside the
'Thousand Islands'
Like a hospital, a boat at sea runs 24 hours a day,
but our spirit is so damped at night: we deserve peace!
Yesterday it looked for a while like we would get
it: a nearly full moon shining out of a cloudless sky, and for a change some
useful breeze to push us along under sail, down through the Java Sea. It is dark
at 6pm, so the early part of the night is easy going: washing, supper, all
interrupted at ten minute intervals by the tyranny or the oven timer's bell:
time to poke your head out, and have a look around. During the early part of the
night I chanced upon an odd collection of lights: white lights everywhere, and
both red and green showing together: the fishing fleet does not strictly adhere
to the international code for lighting, and I simply made a note, and resolved
to check his position in five mins rather than ten: by which time it has become
pretty obvious that I was about to be run down by a large tanker, bearing
down on me at some speed, bows on of course, so both port and stbd lights
visible. Ashamed not to have worked this elementary problem out, but also
relieved that there was time to take avoiding action. If you havn't tried night
sailing, lights are quite interesting, as you get no sense of scale. So the
brain constructs something that is familiar and comfortable, out of the
incomplete data set.
Did notice some far off lightning even then, but it
occurs every night, so no great worry. Until 01.30, when we were hit by a quite
sudden thunder squall. Wind from behind, so good progress all of a sudden, and
twenty five knots of wind no problem. Not even much lightning. After an hour it
all seemed to have settled, but then another storm rolled in, gale force, for
hours, and lightning and reverberating thunderclaps all seemingly overhead.
Waiting for the strike I tried to follow all the fatuous advice:
disconect the VHF, put the spare GPS in the oven to shield it from the
volts. Make sure you have the sharp knife to cut the liferaft free if you are
not toast and the boat is sinking, etc etc. As visibility disappeared I
tried to make a mental note of where the surrounding fishing boats had
been located, but after the first 30 mins this all became a nonsense: no
one could see even a few metres forward, except when the
floodlights came on, for half a second or so, with each lightning
bolt. Good news is that when you are that scared you don't seem to notice the
passage of time, and suddenly it was dawn, and at dawn everything gets
better. It really does, but I'm not sure why: anyone? By 08.00 the wind was down
to 17kts. We had logged over 50 miles, and broken the back of the journey from
Banka to Jakarta
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