Today I showed the first clear signs that I am going mad: I was invited out for dinner; I said no. What was I thinking?!
It appears that yesterday the weather was merely toying with me. After a brilliant 24 hours, I awoke this morning to find I had been plunged south overnight. What has followed has been a long struggle in dull overcast conditions, with most of my effort being wasted on trying not to get blown even further south. Things have started to get a bit easier this evening, but nevertheless, it had me feeling a bit grumpy.
On the boat, I have a SeaMe radar reflector. Because I’m fairly small and, let’s be honest, insignificant out here, this detects radar pulses from other ships, and sends them back trying to make me look like a super-tanker. Essentially, it’s a bit like wearing a big coat: it tries to make you look scarier so the big boys keep their distance. In practice, this doesn’t seem to work, as the huge boats never seem to know you’re there anyway, but it at least lets you know there’s something around.
This afternoon, it had been going off quite a bit. This isn’t especially unusual, as it seems to pick things up miles away, far beyond the horizon, but I kept my eyes open for anything coming to run me down. After a while of seeing nothing, I spotted it.
There, just behind me, was a missile sticking up out of the water, obviously emanating from an evil villain’s submarine lair. Getting quite excited about this discovery, I retrieved my binoculars. On closer inspection, it appeared this was no missile at all, surprisingly, but rather a sail. After recovering from the initial disappointment of not being witness to a world-takeover attempt, I got fairly enthused about my latest realisation: most sails come attached to sailing boats!
Having worked out that it was roughly coming my way, and that being run-over was unlikely to be a problem, I decided to keep on rowing until it got a bit closer. Gradually it came nearer and nearer, until I suddenly realised it was heading straight for me. This seemed like a fairly good point to get on the radio to check that they knew I was there!
Tentatively I called up “the sailing boat heading directly towards me”, only to be greeted by an American; Princess Chloe was coming to say hello. This was quite a big moment - I was going to see real people for the first time in over a month! As they got nearer, the conversation transferred from radio to shouting. It turns out they had come from La Rochelle, via the Canaries, and were heading for the British Virgin Islands. Somewhat sadistically, I asked how long it had taken them from the Canaries: 8 days.
As they were going past, they asked if I needed anything. Confidently, I stated that I was fine, and that this was supposed to be an unsupported crossing anyway. Then, they casually mentioned they would have invited me on for dinner. While I watched the stable, comfortable catamaran sail into the distance, at speeds and in a direction I could only dream of, I began to think about what I’d done. They probably had sofas, and wine, and hot water, and… WHAT WAS I THINKING?
Had I got onboard Princess Chloe, I fear Pacific Pete would have been at risk of being towed the remaining 1,500 miles. For the second time this trip, and for marginally different reasons, maybe it’s a good thing I didn’t look inside!
