Kipper Sailing

Around 2100 last night we sighted land for the first time since Fair Isle, 3 days ago. We were closing the Yorkshire coast in the vicinity of Whitby. Later when we were about 7 miles off, we saw a large thunderstorm over the shoreline and tacked back out to sea, not wanting to get caught in any squalls.

I got my head down at midnight and Nasher was kind to let me sleep through to around 0530, only awakening me briefly when he started the generator and it, almost immediately, cut out due to exhaust overheating. We guessed it might be impeller failure but, rather than trying to fix it in the dark, with the boat heeling over and bouncing around on the chop, we decided to leave it until light and used the main engine to recharge our batteries. This necessitated priming the seawater side of the system which develops an air lock if we sail hard on starboard tack for any length of time, due to a combination of the strainer being raised high above the inlet and the venturi effect.

Close into the shore, between Newcastle and The Humber, there's a lot of shipping tracking up and down the coast and we have to be much more diligent. Out west of Ireland and across the top of Scotland, we saw very few ships and, aside from a few fishing vessels, we didn't come particularly close to any. Now we're tracking several at a time by sight, AIS and, if the look like they're coming close, radar. The new HD Digital radar picks up targets really well but, with Kipper well heeled and bouncing around, MARPA is pretty much useless, so I've been plotting manually. Conveniently the Raymarine system has 2 sets of VRM/EBL lines, both of which can float, so I don't need to use a plotting sheet to calculate CPA etc. AIS also gives CPA but I've learned from experience that it's not wholly accurate in close quarters due to small delays in the system. You can often see that the radar target leads the AIS position. This isn't too bad at range and with Class A targets, but I've seen fast moving Class B targets half a mile ahead of their AIS position! Interestingly, despite the fact that we're “live” on AIS, when the guard vessel protecting the survey ship off Fair Isle called us, he did do using the “old”, “sailing vessel in approximate position x y, this is z” method, rather than calling us by name or call-sign, both of which he would have been able to determine from AIS. We also know, from monitoring competitors' AIS that Class B doesn't work over more than about 6 miles. All of which compounds my existing opinion that ORC have wasted everybody's money by mandating Class B AIS for Cat 2. Incidentally more and more fishing vessels are fitted with AIS but I don't know what their SOLAS obligations are. It'd be somewhat ironic if yachts racing under Cat 2 are mandated to use active AIS but FVs aren't.

Nasher replaced the generator's impeller before he turned in, so I'm going to reward him with a good long sleep. We'll also run 2 dog watches today so's the graveyard watch, between 0000 and 0400, switches back to me tonight. Dog watches are 2, rather than 4, hours, so you run 0-4-8-12-14-16-20-0, which serves to rotate the watches on a daily cycle.

Earlier this morning, close to the shoreline, I was briefly able to connect to the Internet, via my 3 dongle, for the first time since we departed Lerwick. Looking at the BBC web-site, I see that nothing much has changed and fully expect England to lose to the Krauts today. I'd love to be proved wrong though.

The wind is holding for now. Of course it's inevitably coming directly from where we want to go but at least we can make some progress, even if our VMG is totally crap, especially when the tide is against us. There's still the possibility that it might veer SW or W this evening but, if it does, it'll probably go light, so it's all much of a much ness really. ETA Lowestoft is still Tuesday but we harbour a sneaking hop that it might be Monday night.

We hear that the first boats have finished in Plymouth (bastards) but that most of the faster boats are strung out along The Channel. Drifting with the tide and then kedging when it turns against them. The Channel must be littered with toys.