Pelagic is on her way to this year's winter quarters in Uruguay. We departed from Stanley at 13:30 yesterday 11/04/2011. The wind was light and Easterly so we motored north along the coast passing Kidney Island, Berkeley Sound, Volunteer Point, Cow Bay, McBrides Head and there departed the coast on a NWly heading. We had an escort of Peal's dolphins most of the way. The usual seabirds were also there and a few whales spouting in the distance.

We had taken a NW'ly course partly for weather reasons and partly to try and avoid the squid fishing fleet. As darkness fell the loom of lights on the horizon ahead of us showed that we were not far enough to the west of the fleet so we altered course to a more westerly heading.

The squid fishery at the moment is dominated by the Asian jigging fleet. These are moderately large fishing boats about 70 to 100m long, they carry a huge array of lights which are used to attract the squid to the surface where automatic jigging machines operate hundreds of lines each equipped with dozens of luminous lures. The squid attempt to catch the lures and are pulled aboard by the machines. Once aboard the fishing vessel the squid fall into gullies and are washed into the factory to be processed and frozen.

Navigating through the fleet is to be avoided for several reasons; due to their own fishing lights the ships are blind; while fishing the ships lay to a sea anchor which is deployed a long way in front of the vessel, when moving from one fishing spot to another the vessels move at high speed without apparent regard for any other vessel in the vicinity. Luckily we were far enough west to avoid most of the fleet but at one stage I could count the lights of 42 vessels south and east of our position.

Once clear of the fishing vessels we had a good sail until mid morning when we had to put the motor on again. After a squally start to the day the weather is dry and bright now.