News came through all morning about the rescue of the Raindancer crew, it was a remarkable recovery and coordinated from all around the world. What I never mentioned in yesterday’s blog was how Rowan received the Mayday call. Raindancer immediately notified their friend on land when they realised they were in trouble. This guy posted it immediately on Facebook and a site called Boat Watch. Two years ago we got friendly with a French family on a boat called Kumbaya when we met in the Tobago Keys, they are now in New Zealand, they saw the message and contacted Rowan immediately as they knew we were doing the Arc crossing. Incredible how quickly the word spread. Luckily Rowan was able to contact Far, the closest Arc boat to Raindancer as we both have Stinky (Elon Musk’s Satellite internet), we were too far away for vhf.
The other amazing coincidence was Rowan and I both recognised the name Raindancer and we realise now that we were anchored next to them in Santa Cruz, in fact we landed up being so close to them we had to ask them if they were happy with us that close. He was very relaxed (a lot of yachties get very uptight if you’re too close) and I remember his answer clearly “….it is what it is, this is a small anchorage, it should be ok”. They left a day or two before us.
The captain of Raindancer has written a report, and it appears they hit the whale while doing 6 knots of boat speed and that it was like hitting a concrete wall. Within seconds he knew the boat was filling too quickly, and his attempts to blocks holes was proving impossible. They saw the whale with loads of blood on it, so sadly they think it most probably died. A week ago one of the Arc boats sailed by a dead whale. Hannah tells me that whales hitting boats is the second highest cause of whale mortality. So sad. Another sad thing is seeing the huge amount of Chinese and Japanese fishing boats out here in these unprotected waters.
Messages on our fleet WhatsApp chat
A part of Rick the captain of Raindancer’s report
On the up side we had a day of winds in the mid to high teens which gave us some great speed at last, I think we were averaging 9.5 knots and hit a top speed of 15.2 knots! That is until the wind angle changed, Rowan and Nevil tried to get Scary Spice (big Asymmetric sail) to the other side of the boat with a jibe that went wrong. Scary Spice landed up in a tangled mess and we couldn’t get the sock down, it had to be manhandled down onto the trampoline, where she was got back under control into her sock where she belongs!
Scary and Posh Spice joined at the forestay
Tangled Scary Spice!
Fishing fleets circled in red. Ugh! note the big dark blue of no wind that we are heading towards
Amazing to think we have been at sea two weeks and we are two thirds of the way there. Crossing fingers for wind over the next few days as predicted. After that there is less than 4 knots of wind predicted for around the Marquesas.
Enjoying the sunset
Again some boats saw the green flash and we didn’t!
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