Its getting crowded out here!
The Adventures of Allegria & Crew
Peter Lansdale
Sun 18 Jan 2026 20:37
19:28N 41:24W
191 miles in the last 24 hours
Great excitement this morning when I came on watch and spotted on AIS a 300m ship coming straight for us! It had a CPA (closest point of approach) of a matter of meters. It would be interesting to know what are the chances of this, given the size of this ocean and the number of boats out sailing on it. Anyway, this particular ship was still 20 miles off and we decided to wait a while and see if it would spot us and alter course. When nothing had changed and it was clearly visible on the horizon, still on a collision course, Peter called them up on the radio. It took two calls for them to answer and we reckon they hadn't yet spotted us. Anyway, once alerted to our presence, they readily offered to change course and thus we survived to tell the tale! I may be over egging it a bit, but we decided it was nevertheless, a cause for another celebration and so we treated ourselves to a delicious lunch of scrambled eggs and smoked salmon!
Weirdly, though we have not seen any other vessels for at least the last 5 days, until this morning 3 others also appeared today, not none of them aiming straight at us.
Just a quick comment on the significant distance travelled in the last 24 hours; Peter thinks this might be a record distance for Allegria, and, had the wind not eased a little (ie dropped below 20 knts) in the morning, we might have made it to 200. It has to be said, that whilst the boat has no problem at all in these strong winds, the sea is quite bumpy and it can feel like hard work to do the most basic of tasks, even sleeping!
Milla