Drama on Day 1

Well - here we are at 40 12.52N, 71 27.01W, baking sunshine and no wind...
View Larger Map so I have a little time to catch you up with yesterdays drama.

Sailing along nicely in 20knots of breeze, making 9 or 10 knots towards the Azores... I'm on watch and I see this little boat waving at us ... I mean more than the normal salutation kind of wave ... more frantic waving really ... as we get closer it's clear that they are *really* trying to get our attention. I call Barry back on deck and as we come close to their boat they shout that they are out of gas (about 20 miles off shore!) and can we call the coastguard!

Which we did. PanPan, 5 people on board (including 1 child), inappropriately dressed, vessel name "Hooked", no gas, no medical emergency. After some discussion (where it appears the coast guard was assessing whether we would be able to tow the boat ashore ourselves, which wouldn't have been a great idea really) the coast guard asked us to tell them that they were dispatching a 41foot coast guard vessel to come to their aid, eta 1 hour, and to stand by until their arrival.

So we gybed around (Dinah to the rescue!!!), tracked back to them and hove to in their general area. (While hove-to I took the opportunity to prepare some pot noodles as it seemed the perfect opportunity to prepare food ...!!!). Tracking back wasn't the most comfortable for us as we had a full tank of water ballast on the starboard side and didn't have time to dump it in the effort to be quick...

I felt very sorry for the 5 people. They were clearly feeling the cold as they were all huddled up together out of the wind, and they must have been incredibly scared. We shouted at them to put on life jackets and I was pleased to see that at least they had them on board.

The Jones Beach coast guard arrived having been in regular radio contact with us, took the people on board, and towed the vessel away. They seemed very grateful for our assistance and told us if we needed any US coastguard assistance not to hesitate to contact them again on channel 16!

So we reckon we've stored up some serious karma for supporting the emergency services. Only fair winds coming our way now!!!

And speaking of fair winds, and the fact that I said we have no wind today ... we have been doing a little bit of motoring. But being a sailing yacht we are carrying enough diesel for only about 70 hours of motoring in total ... we would expect to be able to sail the vast majority of the distance. So hopefully as we get further clear of land the winds will pick up again.

Forecast is for another 24hours of light wind though...