Miles traveled days 15: 134
Miles traveled total : 1,908
Miles to Port Angeles: 2,947
Tomorrow we want to have a boring day. Read some books, play some cards, have a nap. That’s all. After the day we’ve had today I think we deserve a boring day.
As reported a few days ago, we seemed to be finally free of lows coming off Japan and China at us. The surface analysis and 24 hour forecast yesterday showed no weather west of us besides high pressure. But for some reason the 48 hour forecast showed a big low right north of us. How can that be? We’re guessing they must form out here, and don’t need to be generated by the mainland. That’s going to make our task of dodge the low much more challenging if they can just materialize at will anywhere. Tonight we’re sailing slowly in light wind, working our way slowly northeast.
Today I spent the day cleaning out the freezer. I had about 15 pounds of no longer frozen meats and pre-cooked meals that went over the side. The icky part was that they were all bagged in plastic, which had to be cleaned so it could be held and disposed of onshore. We’ve managed to never throw any plastic overboard and want to make it home with that record intact.
Rob had a more interesting day, with two simultaneous projects. One was to fix the bilge pump which was no longer drawing water, and the other was to find the leak that was filling our bilge to the top every day. Not really two projects you want at the same time. The good news is we have 3 bilge pumps and he found a mangled screen in the primary one that we have for daily use (the other two are a high capacity automatic and low capacity manual). The better news is the leak is just a rudder shaft needing repacked, and shouldn’t cause problems. We’ll continue to monitor it and make repairs if necessary.
Then there was the incident this afternoon with the psycho tanker. We saw the AIS signal of a ship approaching, which was going to pass 7 miles behind us. We were keeping an eye on it and noticed it was turning towards us. Pretty soon it was going to come within a half mile of us. This was very strange behavior and it definitely got our attention. Freighters mid ocean do not change course for no reason, and we’ve never heard of one doing a fly-by just for fun. We were out in the cockpit and could see it approaching, as it continued to turn towards us. Then they blew their horn, one single long blast. At that point Rob called on the VHF to ask them what their intentions were. They responded that they were just checking on us and wanted to know if everything was ok. They stopped turning toward us and passed a quarter mile off our stern, perpendicular to us. Then they turned away from us, which was good, but they continued to turn, until they were back facing us again, about a half mile behind us, and then slowed down. At this point we both became very concerned. This is not typically how a tanker maneuvers in mid ocean, and there was no reason for him to be turning back toward us.
As luck would have it we had the SSB on because it was just about time to check in to the PacSea net. Rob broke in with priority traffic and gave the details to the net controller in Hawaii. We had no idea what else to do at that point. They no longer answered our calls on the VHF. A couple minutes later they turned away, accelerated, and continued their original course west. We have no idea what the point of it all was, but we’re going to report it to the Coast Guard and the shipping company. They wasted an incredible amount of fuel for absolutely no purpose, and totally freaked us out. We were glad when their AIS signal finally got too far away and dropped off the radar. We gybed our jib over and changed course and headed northeast.
Teresa
