Close encounters of the boat kind
03 July 2017 | Somewhere off Milwaukee
It is the middle of the night and I am off Milwaukee. There is always one ship I look out for here: Lake Express. Sure enough, the AIS picks it up about 10 miles away coming from across the lake. So at midnight it passes .3 miles right in front of me. At night, lights look a lot closer than they really are, so I unnecessarily slow down right before it crosses. After traveling 11 hours, if I had been three minutes further south, someone would have had to alter course.