Pacific Crossing Day 2 - 3nd June 2020

Pacific Crossing Day 2 - 3nd June 2020

Midday position local time:
- 02 degrees, 42 minutes South
- 095 degrees, 25 minutes West
Sailing on a broad reach in beautiful conditions, not a cloud in the sky
Sea State: long rolly swell of 2 metres
Wind: 15 knots at 115 degrees
Speed over the ground: 7.8 knots
Course over the ground: 255 degrees

The perfect conditions continued for the last 24 hours, overnight wind was around 10-12 knots all nights and the swell was gentle. The moon is nearly full and it was drier than the first night where the dew was crazy. Its surprisingly cool at night out here.

We had quite a lot of excitement last night just as I was going on off watch. We had seen about 6 or 7 fishing boats and tracked a couple as the sun set and they were luckily moving behind us, but then we spotted a bright light and a fainter one ahead. There was no radar target or AIS but it appeared quite close. We turned the boat north away from it and carried on monitoring trying desperately to get a radar target - but nothing.

A few minutes later it became obvious the light was zooming closer towards us - we were both pretty wired and I grabbed our deterrents as we watched a 20 foot launcher approach Askari with two men aboard, with bright lights on poles. They came within two metres and spoke in Spanish with big arm signals to direct us in a southerly direction. Andrew was calm and understood they were guarding their fishing equipment that stretched over 4 miles. We quickly furled the genoa and turned into the wind under engine following their instruction, with them a few metres away ensuring we kept to the course. It was a pretty nerve-racking hour and I stayed inside clutching a can of bear spray, but after a mile or so we saw the 'beacon' marking the southern end of the net. They then came back closer and Andrew managed to have a brief conversation, they were Ecuadorian and were very excited with big grins when we said we were from Australia and that we had come from Isabela. They took photos of us and we took one of them too and they zoomed off into the night. The fisherman that work out of open boats hundreds of miles from land are tough guys. We set the sail and took a few deep breaths before relaxing into the night watch.

We have seen one more big fishing boat this morning and then got to speak to Zouterik ahead of us who reported they have also seen a lot of lights at night. We cannot remember ever seeing any boats in the Pacific on our last crossing. We had a lovely chat with the Zoutz this morning including hearing from Linde and Berber about their day of home school- it's so lovely having these good friends not so far away.

The day continues to be absolutely beautiful and we just had a wonderful sashimi lunch.

Hoping for less excitement tonight….

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