So with a clean bum and birthdays duly celebrated we had no hesitation in heading off into the ocean to make the passage to Borneo. It had been a while since the last “passage” so I for one was a bit nervous. Visions of being stuck in nets, approached by “pirates”, and the new danger; being struck by floating logs flitted through my mind. Deep breath on we go!
Well to be honest the passage was a bit of a cruise except for the ship that tried to run us down. As a general rule we don’t worry about ships; the AIS system we have from Vesper Marine is awesome. It tells us the size, speed, direction of the ship, where it’s been and where it’s going. Unfortunately it doesn’t tell us whether or not the guy currently in charge on the bridge is a complete moron or not.
Mark had seen the ship early on and changed direction. He continued to cruise along knowing we would come within about 1nm of said ship. I was jerked from slumber by a bellow . “Look at this screen and tell me his speed” Well sorry, but sadly I am approaching 50 now (I know, hard to believe!) and sadly the eyesight is not what it once was so I could not find any speed on the screen. The thing about computers is that they do not take into consideration the state of the person trying to work with them. So here I am semi blind, confused and the machine flashing, unhelpfully, “collision imminent” as I am trying to find the speed of the”collisioner”. To no avail however as that information is not on the particular screen I am peering at!!! (thanks Mark). Long story short, Mark does a massive 180 to avoid us being more of the debris in this part of the ocean and we breathe a big sigh of relief.
Moral of the story; do not presume that those in charge of large ships will follow their stated course or advise you if they decide to change it. Always call them up, even if you think you have all the info you need. You never know when some human will decide to do something that the computer does not anticipate!