Jess here again, if you know me well you’ll know that if there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s sleeping! Anywhere anytime, if I need to sleep rest assured I’ll do it…….unless I’m on watch of course. So this morning as I came off watch at 0600 I promptly lay down in my bunk and lulled into a deep sleep. In doing so I of course missed all of the action of the morning as we were approached by another vessel and had several radio calls with border force. I’ll let Matt take over here to give you a full account of the action from the morning……..

At 0730 I received a call from Barry on the helm saying there was a small boat off our starboard side, signalling for help. As we were 60M offshore, it was the last place I expected to see a small vessel. I climbed up into the cockpit and Barry pointed out a boat with an individual stood up, waving their arms, holding what looked like pieces of clothing. There appeared to be several other people in the vessel and we couldn’t see an engine.

 Under maritime law we are obliged to render assistance to any vessel in distress, providing it does not place your own vessel or crew in danger. Whilst Barry turned us around and brought us a bit closer, I called the Rescue Coordination Centre (RCC) to advise them of the situation. The RCC requested that we stand by the vessel in case there was an emergency whilst they contacted Border Force.

A we slowly motored toward them, we could see there were 11 people on board, one of which was stood up on the bow trying to attract our attention. They started their engine (which was inboard and why we couldn’t see it before) and motored toward us. As they came closer we could see a bag of shellfish on their deck and plastic containers which we assumed contained fuel and water. They were rubbing their bellies and making eating gestures with their hands and talking in a language we could not understand. We store our fruit in bags under the Bimini in the cockpit, so I pointed to a bag of oranges and asked if they wanted them. They nodded and smiled so I untied a bag and threw it across to them closely followed by a second. Indicating their thanks, they motored away. Shortly after they left, the RCC called back for more information and I told them that they just wanted some food and that they had left.

Jess here again……After the excitement of the morning we had another lovely day ahead of us with a bit of sailing in the afternoon as the breeze filled in. Matt gave Alan a lesson on how to do some sun sights with the sextant. I could hear the cogs turning in Alan’s brain as he impressively persevered with this throughout the day. Much to Alan’s dismay he discovered that evening that his watch was somehow 9mins out so all his times he’d calculated earlier in the day were wrong! I’m sure there will be many opportunities throughout the leg for Alan to perfect his newly learned skills.

We noticed Silver Fern stopped dead in the water at one point in the afternoon and then promptly received a picture from Dave of fisherman Ken catching a Yellow Fin Tuna! With fishing envy from our new fisherwoman Sandie, and a lot of patience from Barry who managed to untangle the birds nest on the reel from our last fishing adventure, they managed to cast a line out. Unfortunately their efforts were in vain as they only had one nibble on the line for the rest of the day. Maybe when we catch up with Silver Fern tomorrow they’ll have enough fish to share! Here’s hoping.

We sailed off into the night ready for an early morning get up(3am) to navigate our way through to St George Basin.

Tune in tomorrow for more adventures!

Salt Lines Out :)