Atlantic Roadworks 46:03N 17:50W
Millybrown
Mark Hillmann
Sat 20 Jun 2009 17:32
Last night I was just getting to bed, washing up
done, heading quietly for Ireland. The alarm clocks were
set and in that last look round I saw an orange flashing
light. What? Roadworks in the Atlantic? There was a ship
showing about 12 miles away on the AIS: Juan de la Cosa. It was only doing
5 knots which is slow for everyone except us.
I watched and made out more orange strobe
lights: "They have got a lane closed". You don't sleep with
unidentified floating objects around. I could make out lights that could
be Juan de la Cosa and perhaps another couple of boats and was that loom off the
clouds from more? On a clear night you do see bright lights beyond
the horizon.
Gradually more boats appeared, bright white deck
lights masked the strobes but only a couple were ever close enough to see
navigation lights. The AIS gave Juan's phone number (MMSI really) and
it was a temptation to call him, but you could see what they were doing,
fishing, in 4,000m of water. What for? I don't know but perhaps
squid or tuna?
A second boat well to the north had an AIS
transmitter, the Garcianoda. This put the Americans to shame. On the
St George's Bank, south of the Grand Banks, I had met their trawlers,
pirouetting as trawlers do, no transmitters even with the Grand Banks fog.
Here was a properly organised fleet of at least 20 vessels over 12
miles with transmitters on the most northerly and southerly
vessels. Well done the Portuguese, or were
they Spanish?
It was after 1am when I at last got some
sleep. The boats were doing 1 knot while fishing but 5 knots, the same as
us when they moved and fishing boats always have the right of
way.
It was a quiet night after
that.
Today is a good wind but the wrong
direction. I am happy to go north rather than get in the northerly winds
down the Spanish coast and I expect it will change again in a couple of
days. This wind would land us at Galway on the west coast of
Ireland. But the sun is out so no complaining.
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