Route to Panama 14 February 2024
Joyce and I had the 2.00am to 5.00am slot – the red eye slot which passed reasonably without incident. After a sleep Carolyn made a delicious mushroom omelette which we had with a slice of the bread that I had made which was good even though I say it myself.
It was a reasonably calm morning with the swell being quite manageable and we were heading essentially to the North of Aruba. The debate in my head was which route to follow going forward and I thought we would continue on our current course for the day. We discussed piracy and felt that the ABC Islands were the safer side of Venezuela and we should be about 120nm off their shore so that should be ok.
We had a relaxing day reading, chatting and listening to David’s stories and having to listen to his explanations and demonstrations about Tilley clothing!!. We saw some dolphins for about 20 minutes enjoying playing around the bow of the boat and Keith thought he saw a pilot whale. We had another nice salad for lunch with fruit. I had been studying the weather further and at some point we needed to gybe to clear the Columbian coast properly so I decided to gybe at about 5.00pm. I had placed a waypoint some way off and knew we could make 255-260 degrees on a port tack and so when we gybed we need to go far enough to enable us to sail back on to that waypoint. Once we gybed we were making about 308-315 degrees.
Before we gybed we saw a ship on our AIS and the CPA (Closest Point of Approach) was about 3nm which was fine. After we had gybed the CPA changed to 1nm then 34 metres and it kept adjusting as we moved but it was going to be far too close for safety. We did not have our AIS on to transmit so they may not have seen us. Although I did not want to break radio silence I decided to call the tanker up which was some 241 meters long and called Seasenator. I called up on channel 16 being the International safety channel and used worldwide and asked the ship to turn to channel 06 so if you were not on that channel you would not be able to hear what we were saying. I explained that we were a yacht on his starboard side and that our AIS was not working – had he seen us in radar? They confirmed yes and I asked if it was ok to maintain our current course? They said yes. I expected the tanker to say alter course (he was on 012 degrees and if he turned to port this would mean they would pass in front of us. However it started to turn to starboard toward us. By this time we could just see the tanker and had 12 minutes to our collision point. The tanker slowly started to turn, 014, 015, 016 and then all the way to 042 – a huge turn for such a large tanker which was looming up toward us and we could see his bow wave. I was ready to out the sails in quickly and motor out of the way but the tanker gradually came round and we could see it intended to pass behind us. I was watching the situation carefully and had the intercept button on which shows a ring on the chart plotter in red where then nearest collision point will be. It slowly came round and passed about 1.2nm behind us much to the excitement of the crew. It just shows you need to watch these things carefully and things can happen very quickly.
The wind began to increase and we were zooming along and I knew it was going to get stronger so we exchanged the genoa for the staysail which felt more comfortable for the night and just in time for supper. Keith made a fish and leak dish with mashed potato which was very good and content we settled down for the night. Noon 24 hour run was 168nm,.
The blog will continue as we head off to Panama and beyond.
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