June 14, 2014 Bahamas to Georgia

Happy Anniversary to Don and Linda, my brother and sister-in-law!

 I slept until about 9:00 am.  Then I made breakfast for us.  I had made omelets in a muffin tin, too, so they only had to be heated.

The VHF radio seemed to have a lot of “Pan-Pan” traffic today.  That is when the USCG warns you of someone in danger and if you are in the area they could use your help.  There were two capsized boats each with 5 people, someone out of gas, and someone in the water.  And they keep repeating the message about every 20 minutes until all are safe.  

The winds had been “light and variable” all night and were even worse today.  Now I know why they say variable.  We wanted the wind to hit the boat at 120 degrees.  But it would swing from 60-180 degrees and barely move the boat in one direction.  Plus the spinnaker sail would lose wind, start to make rustling noise, and then fill with wind with a snap.  So that kept you awake. 

We turned the boat more to the west at times, instead of north west.  We were hoping to hit the Gulf Stream to help move us faster.  During the day, Dave was mostly at the helm with occasional naps.  He is that way if we are in a car, too.  I can usually find things to do, like meals or dishes.  But we both read or play games on our phones.  Especially since we didn’t have rough seas. 

About 5:00, Dave had to hail a cargo ship that was about 3 miles away, because it looked like we may cross paths.  And since we weren’t using our engine, we wanted him to be aware of us.  Our AIS gives us their boat name, so that is nice when you have to call them.  But Dave wasn’t sure if he pronounced it right- Ikan Jabuh.  They changed their course to avoid us, which was very nice.  We thought about how these pilots have to know the languages of the countries they have to travel to.  But someone told us later that all boat traffic uses English as a standard language. 

After this ship passed, we started heading north again to get the best wind.  Hearing another Pan Pan about a capsized boat, Dave thought we better start watching for boat debris in the water. 

I took an early nap again while Dave took the helm early evening.  This time I slept until 12:30  am. 

Obviously, our boat in not to the right proportion, but the cargo ship is in our danger zone and another will pass in front of us.  The cargo ship turned to starboard and crossed in front of us instead of coming towards us.

Here's how close he actually was

This is how it looked on our chart plotter