Strange Night Sightings
Return Day 5 8/04/20144 12:00 Noon (1476 Miles to Golden Gate Bridge)
After 4 complete days of sailing we are making good progress. The first24 hours we made 136 miles, second 120, third 126 and fourth 131 for a total last night at Children’s Hour of 503 miles made good. Sometime last night we completed the first quarter of the way. We celebrated by eating a fresh Mahi Mahi with wasabi and soy sauce, nice treat. I was just getting off watch at 9 P.M., which was still light, and I saw flying fish. We now know why the fish are flying because Dorado’s can’t. No sooner did I tell Nico that I saw a flying fish he hollers out that we caught a fish. This Dorado was 2.1 kilos with enough meat to have some grilled fillets later. Two minutes before the catch Lindi had just emptied a can of chicken into the curry chicken she and Angie were preparing, it would have been nice to have had the fish in the curry but this made for a nice meal with the combination of raw fish and chicken curry; like I said we do eat well.
The routine is settling in but I still require a lot more sleep than normal. Keeping my bulk stable is still contributing greatly to my fatigue. The gals are having an even more difficult time because of their short wing span, they are finding it challenging to find hand holds without lunging from time to time. The 3 point rule is critical on a listing and pitching boat and one of those points should not be your broken nose against the bulkhead.
After nearly 8 degrees north of Hawaii the tropical heat is beginning to dissipate, a bit. Night watches are requiring light foulies to keep us dry while it is cool. The spray during the day is a welcomed. I did get slammed by a wave while I was driving at night the other evening while only wearing shorts and a light shirt, a mere half hour from the end of my watch. I went down and got a jacket, put it over my wet clothes and went back on watch. The mistake I made was not changing; I went to bed after taking off my shirt but not my shorts. Oh well, I have had to deal with the chafing of my butt for the last few days; lesson learned!
This morning’s watch was just crazy. The remainder if the crew is worried about the sanity of Angie and Juan. At 3 A.M. I came up on board to relieve David and saw a light on the horizon at about position 8 o’clock off our port quarter. I said, “Ohh, I just missed the moon”. Which Angie replied, while at the helm, that it wasn’t the moon but a stationary ship that has been there for the past 3 hours. We speculated that it was some military ship or some research vessel. After David went down, Angie and I started seeing thing in the night. The first sighting was a strobe moving off our port bow a mile or so away moving rather rapidly. We first thought it was an aircraft but the strobes were 10 seconds or so apart. The movement was in the general direction to the stationary ship but not in direct path because we could watch the strobe pass between us and the ship. We figured that the craft must be on the water because the strobe sequence was intermittent due to the wave interference. While the strobe was still in sight off our stern Angie, still on the helm, reports seeing a red solid light at about 11 o’clock off the port side. This was definitely a watercraft showing us its port running lights. It wasn’t appearing to be moving as fast as the strobe but definitely faster than a sailboat. It appeared to be much closer to Avion, approximately mile or so but we couldn’t hear any engine noise. While this red light was moving across our port side Angie reported another strobe at about 1 o’clock off our starboard bow and approaching rapidly. We decided to make sure our AIS system was on and the VHF radio was on. The AIS system is a tracking device that sends out a signal to other crafts showing boat name, type, position and movement which Avion is equipped. We also can see other crafts with AIS transponders but Juan wasn’t checked out on how to monitor that on our navigation system. Angie, being a prudent helmsman, kept Avion as high into the wind to starboard as possible since the strobe was moving from our starboard to port across our bow that appeared to be way less than a mile out. Take these estimated distances with a grain of salt; at 3:30 in the morning while being fatigued one’s judgment of distances, or anything for that matter, is suspect. This may account for the reason stated earlier about the remaining crew’s concern of our sanity.
Anyway, getting back to the story, Angie said that she could start breathing again once she could see the strobe off our port bow. Knowing that I can’t hold my breath that long I began to worry not only about a potential collision but also for my helmsman’s ability not to pass out. We kept a keen eye on the luff of the jib hoping to see a light. It finally flashed and Angie finally took a deep breath. This strobe was even closer than the other two lights and appeared to be moving faster than the red light but about the same speed as the previous strobe. Since it was significantly closer it moved off our stern much quicker than the previous two light. All of the lights were moving in the opposite direction as Avion but again not directly to the stationary ship. You can probably guess that Angie and Juan had a heightened sense of awareness for the remainder of their watch.
When Angie went down to wake Nico I could see an animated Angie trying to explain to Nico what we just experienced. Nico, having been checked out on the AIS system, went to the computer and was unable to verify any AIS signal in the region. By this time the stationary ship was over the horizon but we could see a faint glow. David had seen the stationary ship before he went off watch, otherwise the remaining crew would have been totally concerned about our sanity. So what do you think? Military exercise with stealth technology, some research vessel analyzing the debris field in this general area of the Pacific, some alien encounter of the third kind, or some hallucinations from a couple of fatigued sailors?
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