[p]pjr4728
[s]
pos: 11 52.466n 44 48.887e
sp: 5.5
h: 295t
w: 15-17kn ESE, CC , SS 0.5-1.0m ENE
d: 29/03/19 21:00 GMT+0300
Well, we are about 100nm East of Djibouti and have now turned North towards the Red Sea?at last!
The more astute among you may notice that, sometimes, this site can appear to report odd distances it calculates for our daily distance covered - but this time it is definitely our doing....The reason for this being that, until now (on this passage only!), our true position has always been a day ahead of where we were reporting it to yit. (We thus actually left on Weds 13 March are as I write are actually into Day 16 of our passage, not 15)?Probably me being over-paranoid, but this was a wee counter-measure, just on the off chance the Director of Operations, Pirate Pete?s Maritime Acquisition Services (Somalia and Yemen) Inc., just happened to be sat in their Mother Ship or souk while using the internet to peruse an obscure New Zealand yacht tracking site, looking for potential victims!!. Obviously, we have of course been reporting our true pozzie to the maritime agency that coordinates military asset providing overwatch of what they deem to be the HRA (High Risk Area) -
which
we?ve been within for the last 1,200 odd miles.
The even more savvy (sad?) may have already rumbled to our ruse, if you've tried using the Marinetraffic.com tracking site to look us up and seen a yacht on our track, but apparently a day ahead! This might be possible, given the odd occasions we have switched off our AiS ?silent? (receive only) mode. Doing this could actually transmit our details (so we don?t scare the bejesus out of ships passing close-by) ?Unfortunately, however briefly, this does give those ships the potential to acquire and retransmit later some (or all?) of our AiS details via VHF repeater stations, thus potentially giving our cunning plan away!
You may laugh at the improbability of such a scenario, but even the subsistence fishermen we have met elsewhere do seem to able to be ?connected? these days. We've also met one cruiser who admitted, somewhat sheepishly, that they had essentially completed their circumnavigation using only their phone for navigation!. Thus, (presumably), it's likely that the more-savvy crims are also using modern tools to make their job easier? You would also, perhaps, be amazed at how many ships here also travel with no AiS on, switch it off on us (if we don?t identify ourselves to them), or leave it on but state only ?Armed Guards Onboard? as their destination?measures obviously designed to reduce their risk from n?er do wells, imagined or real.
The reality is, however, that the risk of piracy, for yachts, if not negligible, IS now relatively VERY low indeed (Otherwise we wouldn?t be doing it?doh!) ? kidnappings have all but been eliminated for the past 5 years and the few incidents that are reported appear to be misunderstood innocent approaches, or simple robbery (even if sometimes this maybe ?with menaces'!). Any remaining organised Somali operations (think motherships with multiple skiffs, AK47s and RPGs etc) are now almost certainly focussed on the potential big ticket produce - not the relatively-small number of yachts passing through, however pathetically-slow and easy targets we might make by comparison! This commercial traffic is certainly what the International forces (apparently) patrolling the area are here to protect against though ? not us lowly yachts, and fair enough.
So, why ?blow the gaff? now? Well, being the anal blighter I am, naturally I want the yit line to look accurate as we turn north!..But, although we won?t leave the HRA for another 450nm or so, the generally very light weather of this late in the passage season we have been experiencing, has just apparently been luckily suspended in favour of a ?perfectly-timed blow? for us ? 15-30kn right up the jacksie and which looks like it should last long enough to blow us very rapidly from this turn point, to and through the last ?higher risk area? (within the HRA haha! ;-), now apparently presented by Yemenis operating in the narrow gap of the BEM (Bar-el-Mandeb) into the Red Sea and up to the Hanish
Islands.
(OK, ok, the wind is also forecast to turn head-on once we get through, for the last 350nm of the passage to Suakin - but let?s look on the undoubted positive side!).
Both our speed in this wind and the size of following seas (as well as our low return value) make it highly improbable that any (successful) attempt at boarding us in the dodgy area would or could be made. Here?s hoping that stating that assumption is NOT tempting fate lol!
If we sound a bit too blasé now, we definitely haven?t really been, nor will be over the remaining days?Our passage through the IRTC (International Recommended Transit Corridor) part of the HRA HAS been (mostly) uneventful, but the skipper did get the chance to go a bit spreadsheet mad to work out how to respond, as best as we were able, to changing currents, winds and rate of progress to meet key timing points of this part of the passage, all essentially in order to minimise risk (eg passing through the ?dodgiest? 95nm between dusk and dawn - or as near as was possible given our lowly max speed, which wouldn?t actually allow for full passage of that distance in the 10.5 hours that currently passes for night here!)
We also, thankfully, have had luck on our side ? a half-moon has been largely obscured by cloud, the wind kicked up to 18kn behind for long enough to have a very good (150nm+) day run down to meet our dusk deadline..etc. etc.
We have actually had only 2 confirmed encounters with non-ship traffic along the IRTC:
The first were 2 small local
fishing vessels, pre-?dodgiest-zone?, who we saw (it being full daylight) and presumed to be just innocently moving across our track at 0.5nm, to fishing grounds. Admittedly, it did help our state of mind that we also had 1.5m
following sea at the time!
The other was just before dawn yesterday, when we encountered 2 more small vessels together, apparently
fishing (albeit illegally, within the IRTC). They upped and moved very quickly indeed (for local fishing boats) across our track as we approached. They did have lights displayed however.. and anyway, they were moving away from us (towards a passing tanker, phew!). However, given they then switched their lights off shortly after stopping about 0.5nm away, we did take the precaution of 'going dark' and high-tailed it on different tracks to get us out of visual by full dawn!
Another ?encounter?, the previous night, was almost certainly imaginary, albeit that it yielded some valuable lessons for us: Shortly before emerging from the ?dodgiest? area, at 4am the skipper was hastily aroused from his pre watch-change ablutions by the on watch crew,. She had felt an unusual passing wake and then spotted 2 clear returns on our radar at 0.25-0.5nm. (These returns were indeed obvious and continued to move around our stern quarters for the following 30 mins). Meanwhile, the crew had been sufficiently prompted to do the obvious, i.e. putting our less-than-carefully-laid Avoid, Alert, Secure and Deter measures into total chaos, running around the yacht like the Keystone Kops on one of their off days!
Our trouble was that, while we had discussed everything we would try and do in such on situation, like what, who would do it, how and when, and even practised and established the limits of some of it (e.g. written lists, assembled equipment, including a raft of stuff to try and disable approaching craft and deter or slow down boarding, macgyvered from yacht and fishing gear and numerous cable ties!), this was all done in parts ? without actually putting it all together in a full-on actual practise.
Needless to say, the plan(s) improved a bit after this ?virtual? encounter?Because, after all of that, it was officially declared to almost certainly have been a false alarm (or perhaps even just naval guys surreptitiously checking out our dark-running craft!) - but more likely to have been from an odd counter wave, coupled with echo returns from a part on our own damned yacht! The crew (Mili excepted) nonetheless celebrated, as may be expected, with a clean change of underwear.
Anyway, it certainly hasn?t been as bad as you might infer from any of the above..In fact Sue said a couple of days ago (albeit before the 2 alarm states!) that so far it has been her most relaxing passage to date!
Other brief highlights of the 1900nm of passage so far completed:
1) The yacht and its reinforced rig ?holding it together?, a pre-requisite for:
2) The crew doing likewise and getting through to this point safely, still sound of body and mind. Well, as much as they were to begin with, at any rate;
3) No dodgy encounters and some pretty easy downwind sailing through the IRTC, even if we did supplement this with the motor quite a bit to enhance speed;
4) The best display of dolphin pod aerial acrobatics either of us had yet seen - the jury scored it a well deserved ?dix points?!
5) The mental fun working out who is who and up to what when staring at a radar screen in the middle of the night;
6) The nightly VHF entertainment when the anonymous comedians & karaoke singers etc come on - funny even when we don?t understand the language!
7) All the little things, like the eternal reviving power of a nice cup of tea, the surprise of seeing a phosphorescent toilet bowel, the power of positive thinking (eg 6nm more of my night watch down while I've been written this!) and
7) For the most part, Mili does not seem to have been phased at all, untired yet of playing ?Find It?, or being chased around our very-limited cabin space, chasing Bear.
Lowlights are very few, being limited to:
1) What can only be described as an appalling lack of planning on our part, which has reduced us now to having only 3 beers left for the remaining 5-7 days of the trip - even if they ARE nice big bottles of Kingfisher Strong. Made MUCH worse by the realisation that we are headed towards Sudan, a country that is meant to be ?dry??..Aaaagh!
2) We were a bit late in leaving Cochin, so have thus had a little too little wind and thus used the engine more than we would have liked ?Hence refuelling from the jerry cans we carry on deck can become tiresome if in a lumpy sea?Although our investment in a $2 syphon has
considerably eased this process, given the light winds we expected for this extended passage we acquired a total of 21 of the buggers rather than the 6 we started with from NZ, when Brett and Sam were aboard to assist.
3) It?s been quite rolly, with more side swell than ideal - causing Windchase to complain a bit too loudly at such times. This was also Sue?s excuse for putting her knee through the oven door, while attempting to retrieve the sausages that had made a valiant attempt to escape being cooked for dinner. She has been angling after a new oven for ages, so the jury?s out on whether it really was indeed an ?accident?. On the bright side however, we had already consumed the
lovely beef roast that had been in the freezer. And Sue will undoubtedly be happier now, or at least will be, when we finally get to an oven supplier. I should also perhaps add that Sue was unhurt in this incident, although the same cannot be said for the oven, or sausages;.
and finally of course
4) An ever-growing spread of Lists.
TTFN, Windchase
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