Transatlantic 1st week (Pirates!)

So we weighed anchor from our un attractive spot in the industrial end of Las Palmas. And weaved our way out between the other 100 yachts waiting to leave. Although not that exiting at the time. Its taken a lot of time and effort to get a boat on the start line for a transatlatic, and here we are heading out. There are a couple of big boat anchorages just out from the town for us to negotiate. First thing is sails up as there is only 2 hours of light left. We meander down the east of the island heading south to the open ocean. And The Cape Verdie 900 norm south which will be ours turning point to head west . The wind is predicted a bit light and we will have to try to stay on the patchy northerlies to make progress. These breezes look strongest for the the next few days nearer to the African coast . So we ease our way closer to stay in the breeze. This decision turned out to be more adventurous than we had thought.
We are catching fish regularly and the fresh vegetables are lasting. Routine has set in 3 hour watches. We are even having rear deck salt water showers now the water and air temperatures are warm.
The choices to go inland and follow the breeze was good from a sailing tactics point of view. But in normal racing we don’t include Pirate risk and on this occasion nor had I. It was the middle of the day blue sky fishing rods out, our boat was looking like a laundry with all the washing drying on the rails. I was downstairs reading when Rob said he could see a RIB coming towards us at high speed. It was on the horizon but coming our way. We were 150nm off the shore of Western Sahara. “This it not normal” I grabbed the binoculars and headed up to the cockpit. Rob pointed them our they were still a mile or so away, but it was clear that this was trouble. Just as you have seen on you tube it was 10 African men speeding towards us in a wooden fishing boat. WE hid Sarah downstairs and all stood on deck looking directly at them through binoculars. They eased the speed off there boat and matched our speed about 200 yards away.it was clear they were measuring us up. We sent out an all station message by radio and contacted Falmouth coast guard with our position and situation. After just about 2 or 3 very long minutes, I think they decided we did not make the cut for bing robbed. (I’m sure they would have heard our transmissions). They moved aft of us and more slowly headed for the horizon. They moved just over the horizon but we could still see them on the radar. They had not gone far!.. Nick climbed the mast to keep tabs on them. And we stayed in contact with the coat gabardine with up dates. We were many hundred of miles from civilisation, so we were the only people who solve the problem. Night fall was coming so we needed a plan. We were pretty sure they had found us out in this big wilderness by using the AIS system. And they could now see the top of our mast and sails from the other side of the Horizon. Our plan was to stay on track and give them confidence that we were not changing coarse. Wait for night fall and turn off AIS keep all lights off and gibe our goose winged rig through 90 degrees. Hopefully putting as much distance from our original track as possible before they noticed. Tension was a little high, so a pod of 20 plus dolphins showing up was a great distraction. Nicks view from the mast was spectacular apparently we were completely surrounded. With dolphins coming in from all directions spoon tethered up and headed for the bow for the best view of jumping and playing dolphins.. Dark was here and time to gyre and go dark.
1 mile, 2 miles, 5 miles, time for supper in the dark inside. 10 miles 20 miles. We put the radar on to see what we could see. We could see a small image on our old track. We decided to stay dark all night. And the next day and the night after. We were now 350 mm from land and out of the range of land based pirated. We gabled back on coarse and have a story to tell. Truth is I think we looked too poor and got lucky .
The next 2 days seemed quite relaxed. 3 meals a day and some light maintenance. 20 to 25 kts of breeze 7 knots of speed all day long.Read more