Mid-Ocean Encounter

Since it happened two years ago, it's been a favorite story, the one about our 30-footer meeting another sailboat in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. About halfway between San Miguel in the Azores and the Strait of Gibraltar, we were tearing along downwind like a roller coaster car at six knots, over a sea kicked up by three days of confused weather. It was my watch. I was bundled up against the chill tucked behind the dodger concentrating on the horizon and trying to keep my lunch down.

On the horizon straight ahead, a whitecap suddenly began to define itself as something else and I grabbed the binoculars.

"Hey, I think I see... a sail!"

Everyone was up on deck in a flash and back to life in the excitement of a pending mid-ocean encounter. After a few minutes or so of scrambling for the camera and fumbling with the radio, it became clear that our boats were sailing dead-on reciprocal headings.

"They don't see us."

"Alter course to the south a few degrees before we barrel right into each other".

Within another few minutes we flew by, with the four of us jumping around, waving our arms and taking pictures, and the three on the other boat stripping off into just their bathing suits and waving a giant Canadian flag. These were euphoric moments.

They were three days out of Gibraltar, they told us over the VHF static, heading for San Miguel in their Sigma 35, which didn't appear to have a dodger. We cringed "We've had it on the nose the whole bloodyway," said the skipper. "How about you?" We commiserated on the fickle weather, and our destinations and wanderings, all about our boats, fish we'd caught and lost, seasickness and God knows what else. All the while we were feeling great about ourselves as we screamed good-natured cruising banter back and forth into the receiver before finally wishing them well and signing off. The rest of the afternoon we stayed jazzed up and mused about the wonders of the cruising world, a world that can interject sailors into each others' lives so intimately and so quickly, and then just as quickly vector them out forever.

A few months later, back in the real world, I got a call in my office. "There's a Canadian guy on the line," said Pat, our receptionist. "Says he wants to write a story about how some nut practically ran him down in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean."

Some nut?

"Put him On."