Maynard’s night watch at sea is 7.30pm to 11pm. Mike does the 11pm to 2.30am watch and I do the 2.30am to 6am watch. We all prefer our individual watch hours and don’t like switching them around as they work so well. Last night though, Mike and I ended up overlapping from 3am to 4am as we rounded Cape Hatteras as it was busy with marine traffic and heavy rain cells on either side of us. Cape Hatteras is always busy as it is the most eastern point of the US coastline and vessels converge here as they travel north and south. The guys tell me they spend their watches snacking the entire time (eg. popcorn, Diet Coke, Reese’s Buttercups, crackers – all healthy foods they tell me) while I am boring and eat apples and drink club soda. We don’t listen to music or watch tv as we are pretty serious about our night watches. This allows the off watch crew to sleep soundly in their beds.

Once all the targets on the monitors at Cape Hatteras had been identified and vectors established at the beginning of my watch, Mike headed off to bed and I continued until it was Maynard’s turn to come up. I like knowing way in advance which way vessels are going so I can have time to decide whether to and how to avoid everyone. During a pre-sunrise watch on the first day 40 miles out to sea off Delaware Bay, one of my targets was coming at us at 26 knots and the CPA was 200 meters in 4 minutes but I couldn’t see him in the binoculars as he blended into a distant ship. It turned out to be a sportsfish boat who swerved across our bow on his way to a favourite fishing hole. He could have passed behind us but he didn’t. Perhaps he wanted to avoid our wake. Whatever he was thinking, it sure had my heart pounding.

The seas were now beam onto Vanish at around 1.5 meters and the wind was at times up to 20 knots. Conditions were changing as ex tropical depression Grace had crossed the Atlantic a few days ago. It moved across southern Florida from east to west then back again to the east and is currently forming a low in the southern Carolina/Georgia area, just out to sea and south of our current position. The clouds are heavy with rain and remind me of the giant thunderheads we often see off Cape Byron in Australia. The above GRIB file shows expected winds up to 30 knots but the forecasts are different every 4 hours. So far, the forecasters say there is a 40% chance of a tropical depression forming from the remnants of Grace but it is moving to the NE. We’ll keep an eye on it, trust me.
(CPA – Closest Point of Approach)