Congratulations on acing this major milestone! Light winds and high heat, phew, makes me sweat just thinking about it. OTOH, I gotta go climb the mast so I'll get plenty sweaty today even at Northern European temps... Not relishing it!
I’m very impressed with your progress. It seems like such a short time ago that you bought your boat. And you are already sailing solo in the Sea of Cortez. Very inspiring!
Rule 17. The stand-on vessel shall "take action to avoid collision by her manoeuvre alone as soon as it becomes apparent to her that the vessel required to keep out of the way is not taking appropriate action," and, the stand-on vessel "must take evasive action before she is unable to do so." (That kind of goes without saying, doesn't it?) In practice I start steering clear at least 20 or 30 of the other boat's lengths away. It's also important that your evasive action is such that you leave the other boat to your port side, which puts you on their port side, aka, passing port to port. Practically all evasive actions should involve turning to your starboard. The reason is, if the other boat sees you at the last minute you must expect her to turn to her starboard. Steering towards *her* starboard side (i.e., you turning left instead of right) makes you responsible for the collision. For ships I start steering towards her stern as soon as I detect a possible collision course, from miles out. I monitor the relative bearing every 5 minutes, and alter course 5 degrees toward her stern if the bearings don't change appreciably. That has always been enough, but if I somehow ended up inside of 20-30 lengths I'd alter course as much as needed to make sure I crossed astern. Never plan to cross ahead of a ship, the gap closes amazingly quickly, and on the off chance they actually see you, they will not alter course to avoid you. Chances are they won't even notice until they have pick the pieces of your rig from their anchor.
I'm so happy the sea shanties bag is back (and my sea-shanty-singing-lino-cut-printing love is even happier) And I'm happy to see your adventure moving along too of course!
I love the design! While I'm not hand printing them anymore, I digitally scanned the carving and the quality of the pieces and consistency in prints is so much better but still has the handmade feel!
The only thing you don't want to do is make a small correction and have the other boat do the same thing where nobody knows what the other boat is going to do and you hit. The most dangerous situation is boats heading bow to bow directly toward each other. Once your engine was on, I would suggest getting well clear before turning it off. You said they changed course into you once your sails were up. So you put your engine on and got clear which sounds like you did the right thing.
Typically, I do alter WAY ahead of time. I don't like there to be any confusion. This was a strange situation for me due to my limited options. Where it got especially confusing is when my last minute change was made to avoid collision, he finally altered as well. Overall, I feel like I made the right choice. The only thing I could have done really differently was to have motored out another .5 mile before raising sails which also didn't really make sense at the time. With the seas and wind at my nose.
Salt and Tar are in the same area ... Keep an eye open for Red Adiva...they are also dog people.😊 Thats why James always rigged his vessels conservatively... Including the wingsail.. long term keep a look out for a roller furler. Makes single handed easier than fighting sails.
I met them in Agua Verde! Super great people 👍 And I've been wanting a furling system, but it's just not in the budget right now. It would make things a million times easier.
