Detour!

I don't know if yall can tell from our track on NoForeignLand, but we made a pretty hard left turn and ran east for a while last night.

When I posted the "golden hour" log entry, a note came in from my Dad.

He informed us that he could see on a MarineTraffic.com website that there was a cluster of AIS targets directly in our projected path.

In our preparation for this passage Jeff and I had read reports about fishing practices in this region. What my dad described in his email was consistent with reports of Chinese fishing boats leaving to drift, or towing a long net, and marking the net with buoys that transpond an AIS identification signal.

My dad sent several emails with clear description of how many, how far apart and how long all together... and where we were projected to intercept. Text book traffic control!

We had some funky latency delays in our email exchanges... but! We had a pretty good idea what we were looking for.

At the local level: weak sea-level buoy transponders and the not incredibly powerful antenna that we have on the mast, meant that we didn't pick up the targets until they were about 6 miles away.

At which point we already had a plan.
We furled (automatically rolled up on the foreatay) our jib, tightened up on the mainsail, fired up an engine, and turned east. We ran a course that anticipated would take us along the net (a few miles distant) to what we thought was the end, after the last buoy.

That's when I went to bed. And when I came back up for my midnight watch, the guys were shutting down the engine, setting the sails, and heading north again.

Just a little 4 hour maneuvers drill. These are your prayers in action folks!! We got to run east. We avoided what may or maynot have been a thing* we had some ideas of what was out there even though we couldn't see a thing!

* the net could have been at se significant depth that we wouldn't have noticed of we'd crossed it... but then again... maybe not! We could have hooked something without rudders and then who knows?! (Not me. Because we took a detour!)
Love and light
Fair winds
~e.