Date: 10 December 2010: 1745
UTC
Position: Off Uruguay 32:01.523S
052:06.354W
We had been made exceedingly
welcome by the Oceanographic Museum in Rio Grande on whose pontoon we had tied
up for 36 hours (the yacht club marina was not deep enough for us). Water, and
electricity had we wanted it, and all for no charge. Yesterday afternoon at 1700
we slipped our lines and motored down the enormous harbour, seeing it all for
the first time as our entry had been made in inky darkness. This was to be our
last long passage of 250 miles southwest to Punta Del Este in Uruguay. The
forecast was for more moderate to fresh winds from the northeast.
It was a beautiful evening gently
sailing down the coast with the sun setting on our starboard bow. The sky was
crystal clear and the display of stars – including an unusually high number of
shooting stars – was magnificent. Well after dark, all of a sudden the horizon
ahead of us started filling with bright lights. Our radar screen resembled a
Space Invaders game. We had hit the fishing fleet and there were dozens of them.
Even with the radar it is difficult to gauge distances in the dark as we twisted
and turned slaloming through them. Things were not helped by the fact that as we
entered the fleet the wind increased from a benign 17 knots to a very powerful
34 knots in the space of three minutes. We had all our sails out and had to
concentrate so hard on avoiding the fishing boats that we had no time to shorten
sail. So far an hour we were screaming through the fleet at speeds over 9 knots,
on the verge of being out of control.
We got through the fleet and
reefed the yankee and poled it out and reefed and goose-winged the mainsail. A
couple of hours later we saw another very bright light on the horizon well to
the left of us. “Don’t worry” I said, “It’ll be another fishing boat and at that
angle it won’t be a problem” (fishing boats always go very slowly). How wrong can you be. Within minutes it
was clear that this bright light was moving towards us very fast. We have a
clever bit of kit on board that was very helpful. On a screen we could see that
the fast moving leviathan would hit us within five minutes. Given our sail
configuration we would not be able to react quickly enough to get out of their
way. The kit also gave me the name of the vessel. It was my old friend MSC Musica, a rather upmarket cruise
ship that I had come across many times at sea and in harbours throughout the
Atlantic and the Mediterranean. We
now had four minutes to impact. I called them on VHF radio. No response. The
profile was much larger now and we could clearly see their large bow wave. Three
minutes to impact, I called them again. This time the radio crackled back “Mina2
this is MSC Musica, go ahead, over”. I explained that I was the tiny pinprick of
light two miles dead ahead of him, and I had neither the time nor ability to get
out of their way. “I see you and understand the situation. I am altering course
to starboard now. I will pass you red to red, port to port”. A wave of relief
came over me. His bow slowly turned away from us. I thanked the captain who
wished us all a good cruise. The incident was over as he rushed past us less
than half a mile away. It would have been ironic to have seen and admired the
ship so many times before, and then to be run down by her.
I awoke this morning to the
comforting sound of the decks above me being swabbed and the smell of my
breakfast being cooked in the galley. As I climbed the companionway into the
cockpit I saw the strangest thing: hanging by the neck from the grab handle of
the sprayhood was an effigy of someone called Capt Bligh – and the rope had been
fashioned from the four clean drying-up cloths I had given the crew yesterday,
which had been torn into strips and carefully braided. Very peculiar. I can only
assume they’ve been on the sauce again.
I must get the crew to clean out
the fridge again. There must be something in there tainting the food. My
breakfast tasted very odd this morning.
