[password]minerva
[position]04°48.33'S 178°58.95'W
[status] Another squally night Tuesday dodging lots of lightning. Additional excitement was provided by an unidentified ship on AIS speeding up on an intercept course in an apparent attempt to catch us. For over an hour we took evasive action by altering course and speed and were matched each time by the ship which would not respond to our calls on VHF. Eventually we were close enough to clearly see the lights on the ship which flashed us with different colors and about then the AIS signal of a second stationary ship emerged from the huge squall on radar. Though it was worrisome for a while, in the end we surmise that the first ship was a long liner trying to ensure that we did not get behind them and the second was the mother ship. Perhaps neither spoke English.

Very light and variable winds today in the 1-5 knot range with thick cloud cover but we managed some sailing along with some motoring. With all the wind shifts our recent track line looks like an EKG - straight lines interrupted by dips in the shape of a "V."
[speed] 3.0
[heading] 311T
[weather] Circular wind, mostly 2-5k. 100% thick cloud cover. 1 m seas. Bar 1010, up 2 in last 2 hours.
12/6/2018 6:45 AM UTC
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