Saturday 30th August 2014
Day 3
11.30pm 1613nm to go
Strange things are happening with chart plotters and not seeing anything.
Earlier in the day I had zoomed out on the chart plotter and noticed a few oil rigs, beacons and shallow water coming up.
After checking it out a bit more we noticed that there is a lot of warnings about not going close, staying at least 5nm away, no fishing, no anchoring the usual stuff.
So we do some calculations and realise the first of these we will get to around 9pm. My watch, just great.
This was making me very nervous, and we know the chart plotter can be a bit out sometimes and being night it's always harder to spot stuff.
The Captain decided to stay up with me thank god as we were having to go through the middle of two of these rigs.
So we get to the area where it's all suppose to be and there is nothing, oh man this makes me even more nervous, what if they are now unused and have no working lights anymore.
I hear you say of course they will still have lights on them, well we no for a fact that they don't.
The Captain goes off to have a sleep and leaves me with it all, and man have I got an eagle eye on the radar.
All of a sudden a mark comes up on the radar and sure enough I see a bright light, I check the AIS nothing.
So am jumping up and down keeping an eagle eye on both the radar and the light, as we get closer it finally comes up on the AIS it's just a fishing vessel, crisis over I settle down some, and no we never did see the rigs at all.
We also had two visits today with customs, another fly over and then late in the afternoon a navel vessel called us and asked the usual questions they also asked if we had seen any suspicious looking vessels around, which we haven't and we in turn got the latest weather update and it looks like we will finally get some wind soon.
And wait for it, yeap I caught two fish right at the same time, and yeap I landed both, but they were only barracuda's which we are very concerned about eating them, so we let them both go, oh well it was fun catching them.
And also I have just proved that you do not need fancy lures to catch fish one of my lines had just a scrap of white material tied to it. It was an experiment I was trying, The Captain was a bit worried at first as he thought he had sacrificed one of his tshirts for it. But is was just a piece of old rag.
Well tomorrow is another day.