Are we there yet? Underway 33:11N 016:00W

Ticketeeboo
Sue & Alan
Mon 7 Oct 2013 07:55
After another good nights sailing at twilight dawn this morning we can see the island of Porto Santo <20NM ahead. Should be on hook or mooring midday'ish.
This has been the longest uninterrupted sail we've had since sailing SusieD from Kinsale towards Portosin in 2005. Made-up with poled-out genoa and preventer on main. Just before dusk put almost 2 reefs in genoa and one in mainsl. Speed only slightly reduced deep broad reaching having good safety margin in dark. Very dark........ BLACK all night with no moonlight whatsoever for the fourth night running. Almost trade-wind sailing so this has been good experience. The scarcity of other vessels makes night-watchkeeping from protection of saloon quite pleasurable. That said, just one vessel to be seen during whole night was a big cargo ship doing 20kn heading towards us, fine on our port bow. Sue saw her on AIS some >30NM out! When few miles away could see she would be <1M when crossing us. When I put a call in to their officer on watch, he said 'We will pass you at 1M'. I replied 'So you will pass our stern' to which he relied 'No we will pass your bow'. I believe CPA 1NM is quite safe
provided I have confirmation so I was now OK with their proposal. Amazingly, after CPA they then made a turn to stb'd and if they had done this few miles earlier they would have passed our stern and we would have seen their intention - then all in accordance with the expected script. On a small yacht it has to be self-preservation first and be sure a BIG ship ain't gonna run yeah down. Mean to say........... one ship all night and it had us in it's sights for a wee while.
Good SSB radio contact with s/y Hobnob again this morning (Porto Vecchio, Corsica) and they relayed for s/y Quest (Nisos Niseros, Aegean) & s/y Sondella (N Greece) who were both only just readable/bit scratchy by us.
Squiddy having one more swim but seems to have lost fatal attraction for time-being. No new fresh fishies today me thinks?
Love to Grandkiddies xxxxxxxx
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Ticketeeboo MMSI 235071989 Callsign 2CED3
At 07/10/2013 02:58 (utc) our position was 33°24.22'N 015°33.66'W
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