As we came close to Sorol Atoll in the evening I decided to go off our course and give it a wide 6 mile berth on the lee side. Faraulep where we hit the reef was 1.6 miles from where it was on the charts so wanted to be sure there was enough space from this one. By the time I got there the wind had shifted and instead of being in the lee we were on the windward side. Still 6 miles is a safe distance so no problem. However the wind was around 20 knots gusting to 26 with simply torrential rain. The stuff you only get in the tropics that reduces visibility to nothing. It made the radar useless as all it could see was rain too. I need radar to see other ships at night so we donft run into each other. Ifd pop up out of the cabin to check every so often but there was no point. There was so much rain I could not see more than a few metres and so much water over the plotter I could not read it either. I kept telling myself I am being paranoid. No boats out here. But the other voic e was saying donft assume so, you need to know if anybody is out there.

As I dried off I then noticed the VHF radio tuned to channel 16 using up power and thought hmm, why donft I just call out and see if there are any boats around. Like that Pink Floyd line (which will make David and Darshaun laugh) I got on the radio and simply asked if there was anybody out there. No response. Well I guess I can relax in this dry cabin for now. Boat on autopilot, sails set and reefed conservatively. An hour later I upgraded my VHF call out request, got on the radio and said ethis is sailboat Yarramundi doing a radio checkf. To my surprise a voice with an Indian accent came out perfectly clearly saying got your radio check Yarramundi. He even got the pronunciation of Yarramundi correct. Where are you...err what are your coordinates and course. He responded and I wrote them down and plotted his course. Shit ? he is only 4.5miles away. Worse, he passed me by a mile. A leapt up into the cockpit with a towel and dried off the plotter (boat navigation screen). S till all that rain about messing up the radar but sure enough on AIS* a little triangle signifying a ship. Clicked on it to find that its name was Colorado. I confirmed his course and where we passed and got back on the radio. eDid you see mef. eNof. eWe passed each other by only a milef. eNo, sir, we did not see you at allf. After H1 told me earlier in the day they could see me on radar I realized that even these big ships radar canft see through this rain.

I rerouted the AIS feed to the boat laptop so I could see other ships with AIS on a dry screen. An hour later another ship came in range. He also passed by within 2 miles. We spoke on the radio but could not see each other. While the rain persisted and the radar was made useless I continued to do radio checks every 30mins napping in-between. The radar does have a rain off-set setting but with the torrential rain we had most of the night I could not rely on it. To make matters worse the wind kept shifting throughout the night so I had to keep getting up to reset the sails in that rain.

When things settled I managed to finally catch-up on some sleep but had a rather lethargic day. The boat felt lethargic too as the only direction I could get any sort of speed was away from out destination not to it. After some work in changing some of the rigging to make it easier to handle single handed and also moving some of the heavy items around to improve the balance of the boat I finally got some speed out of her. As I am sailing solo no one is going to complain about jerry cans in the galley! We are now doing a respectable 5.6 knots and what's more it is in the direction of Woleai. A small pod of spinner dolphins seemed to approve as they whisked by only an hour ago at sunset. Good sailing again.

David

*AIS I believe stands for Automatic Identification System and it is a requirement of all ships over 300 ton to have it. It relays the ship details including name, location, speed, course etc. Yarramundi has a receive only AIS system so I can see boats with AIS but we do not give off the same data. Just a blip on their radar screen. There is a debate in the sailing world that AIS gives a false sense of security as not all boats carry it. I have 2 comments to that. On the open seas it is incredibly handy to know the name of a ship on the horizon. Ifve been able to talk directly to them knowing their name and request weather information or discuss which side we will pass. The other, most small boat radars only cover around 12 miles. Mine will see 24 miles but as it is only rates to 12 miles I canft track objects until they come into the 12 mile range. With my antennae on the top of the mast I can see the fast travelling ships with AIS 36 miles away thereby extending my view.