I read through the last blog and noticed a few typos which I put down to the predictive text, not reading through properly and having had a couple of beers first day ashore and all that. For the grammatically sensitive I will continue to put in a few deliberate spellos and typos. Clearly you will be unable to determine if they are deliberate or not….(yes I noticed that one) but they will be there.

Now for today - the broken cable that saved my life……

That is no exaggeration and I can only now, having let a number of days pass allow myself to reflect upon it. This is what happened:

It was day four of five but it was night and from nowhere a storm sprung up with winds suddenly increasing from 18 to 40 knots. It was my first encounter with excessive winds and particularly difficult as they occurred unexpected and at night. I watched the wind velocity increasing and after an hour I was getting gusts of 50 plus knots…..also a bad swell had established and I was having problems keeping to a course. At this point I remembered basic storm tactics and the survival method of shutting oneself in the cabin with a solid door over the hatch and then to sit out the storm, so I decided to put that into practise knowing that even if the boat should capsize it would simply right itself albeit with a level of chaos and confusion within the boat. 

So there I was hove to (that's with the boat at rest) safe within my capsule listening to the howling gale outside. My plan simply to sit out the storm. After 3 hours I was still there and I knew it would be a further two hours before daybreak. I decided to leave it until daybreak before I looked outside to see if conditions had improved. 

Then I heard my AIS alarm warning of an impending collision. 

On hearing the alarm I froze for maybe 15 seconds before the realisation that to do nothing was not an option.

The boat was still swaying badly but I got the heavy solid 12mm ply hatch off and what I saw almost paralysed me. 

Bearing down on me was the superstructure of a massive container ship. It could have been no more than 20 maximum 40 meters from me. I had to look up to see what it was, with its green and red navigation light so clear that I could see the supporting bolts that held them in place.

I was being run down and probably had 60 to 90 seconds to get out of there. The next 20 seconds are a bit of a blur, but I was able to lean over, start the engine, get out through the hatch into the cockpit, and pull away while I was actually being run down.

And it was that little piece of broken cable that gave me enough warning to at upon…..

Ps the AIS all works ok now and I get maybe fifteen or twenty minutes notice. The second picture is a typical one showing vessels around me to avoid, the black vessel is me. I was surprised at the number of ships I came across in the bay far more than I expected.

Looking at the weather forecast there is another large storm scheduled for thur/fri so will probably wait for that to pass before moving on

All the best for now

Ben