Ocean Tactics Weather Routing
Me:
April 24 status
6°31.238’S 125°52.556’W
TWS 18
TWD 114
Sea state: waves spaced out more, less steep, 6-8 feet. Much smoother. Still a roller coaster, but now it’s the kiddie roller coaster!! Still from SE
partly cloudy
BSPD 6.2
SOG 7
COG 268
TWA 149
AWA 135
Much smoother overnight. No rain. Seas are still heavy, but much less extreme and thank goodness they are behind us (mostly). Main is still on reef2 with full genny. I might just leave the reef in to make things easier. I’m hoping it will be this way all the way to FP - good wind and seas not too bad!
OT:
Expect the wind to remain much the same, moderating slightly by Sunday and backing to the east. Still some showers in the mix with some heavy and squally.
Routing - Rhumbline to destination
Today was a super fun day. We saw another boat for the first time in 18 days!!! We saw the Dole freighter (I posted a fun video about that on April 6) fully 18 days ago and that was the last ship that we saw visually. (We saw others on radar.)
So here we sat, not having seen another boat or ship of any kind for 2.5 weeks, and all of a sudden a blip pops up on our radar and AIS! How exciting! We were like children on Christmas morning!
We first spotted her 15 nm away and we resolved to call him on the radio and say hello when he got to 10 miles away. He was moving at 15 knots, very fast, so we figured he’d close the gap and catch us in three hours.
While we waited, I looked up their name and MMSI number (similar to a boat’s telephone number, but public info) and learned it was a Gunboat 80 named Agave. Gunboat is a luxury, performance custom catamaran builder - the Lamborghini of catamarans! This was truly a special boat so now we were doubly excited to see another boat and a boat this special. The Gunboat 80 is the white whale! There are only two in existence, and we were about to sail right next to one of them.
We couldn’t wait for 10 miles, and when he was about 12 miles behind us, I picked up the radio and called. The skipper answered right away with the unmistakeable French accent, and he was very friendly! We invited him to sail close by so we could wave at each other and he played right along. We’re working on a video of the whole thing.
While waiting, Meghan researched this particular Gunboat and learned it is a $9 million boat and had 250 different people/workers involved in building her. She’s truly a special boat.
As he closed in (at double our speed) I invited the skipper to sail very close to us, and he informed me that he was already sailing the deepest angle he could with his spinnaker. So I confirmed he didn’t mind if I changed course and sailed close to him. He was happy to say yes!
So I fell off and put myself within 0.1 miles or so, and we were able to see each other from the rails, with our naked eyes, both crews waving at each other, being friendly and chatting on the radio.
We opened a bottle of wine to toast them and jokingly “relabeled” it Vin de Francais Qualite (fine French wine) and shot video of ourselves toasting them!
Finally, we said our goodbyes over the radio and wished them well. They said they’ll be in Nuku Hiva until Thursday, which is the day we arrive. They invited us to come say hello, so I hope we’ll be able to visit them before they leave.
It was a clear sign of our fatigue and boredom from 23 days at sea, that this was such an incredibly exciting event for us!! Don’t get me wrong - she’s an amazing boat and a special thing to see at sea, but we acted like four-year-olds on Christmas morning and it gave us a very fun moment of levity and laughs - which were much needed by then!!!
And just look at the photo! She’s so sleek and beautiful. What a gorgeous piece of art!!
Learn more about her here: https://gunboat.com/introducing-gunboat-80-agave/