Necessity is en route to Trinidad

Necessity
Eva and Jan Fr. Mack
Wed 28 Nov 2012 12:11
Our position is 09:46:00N 58:36:00W
The last few days have gone without a hitch. Sailing on your own you have to be particularly alert, even though this is supposed to be one of the best "sleigh rides" in the world. Stable trade-winds and the current behind you? Not exactly. The second night presented itself with more squalls per hour than I have ever had in more than 70.000 nm. That mean winds gusting up to 28 knots, up from 13. All in the dark of course. It wasn't really a problem since I kept Necessity well reefed down even at the cost of some speed. Last night had no squalls. Instead I suddenly had a lot of shipping. That is not so good when you need your already short intervals of sleep. Having saild that I am very happy with Necessity's new AIS-B system. It became quite obvious that the big ships see me not only on radar (thanks to "Sea-Me"), but also on their chart plotter with name, type of vessel, speed and course. Thankfully they all kept their distance. The AIS also have an alarm telling me if a ship will come within 0,5 nm within the next 30 minutes. I got two such alarms, both of them correct. That is better than the radar which gives mostly false alarms.
One more night and I will be in Trinidad. Right now the wind is down to 16-18 knots which is about as good as it gets.
jfm 28.11.12

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