Tropical South Atlantic Ocean - St Helena to French Guiana
We left St Helena on 21st February, bound for the Caribbean. Light trade winds sustained us for almost a week, before we encountered the doldrums far earlier than expected, at about 5 deg S, 25 deg W. Our mostly sunny, dry days turned into overcast, calm days with sightings of pilot whales, dolphins, and bright pink floating jellyfish. We waited for wind for a few days, worried that our fuel might not be enough, taking advantage of any wind that did arrive, and catching lots of rainwater to replenish our tank. Then we decided to motor in the calms and get moving as our schedule was a little tight.
Several days later, on 16th March, we started to get some more reliable winds from the ENE, still interspersed with rain squalls that did very odd things to the wind. Also since arriving close to Brazil we started to see ships.
Our first encounter was a night-time visit by three German warships, the centre one on a collision course with us. Embarrassing for them, and worrying for us, was the fact that our alert to them on the VHF radio at three miles was the first they had realised of our existence. You should have seen the speed that the centre ship turned! It must have spun on a sixpence as one second it was aimed at us, the next it was at 90 degrees, rather messing up their “military formation”! It should be noted here that we are using a NASA AIS Receiver unit, which receives automated transmissions from larger vessels including their identification, position, speed and direction, and which was instrumental in alerting us in advance of this close encounter. However not all military vessels transmit this data so in this we were lucky.
Now we have crossed the Equator after two years in the Southern Hemisphere. We have also transited the South Atlantic Ocean and are now back in the North Atlantic Ocean.