That sixth sense when sailing transatlantic

The stories of open ocean crossings few people tell....
When sharing stories with other sailors about ocean crossings, in my experience, those are mostly tales about winds, sail settings, provisioning... But, for me, there is more to an ocean crossing than that... For me, an ocean crossing is about opening my senses... And at times, my senses go "really open" :-)

Here is one story.. I am looking forward to hear other stories from other ocean sailors about "extra-ordinary" things that happened to them, which make "open ocean sailing".... eh... "special"...

This is my story of my most "meta-physical" experience when crossing an ocean:

The setting: It is 2006. It was my 4th or 5th ocean crossing, and my first trans-atlantic trip...
One night: We were somewhere between Cape Verde and the Caribbean. I had the night shift with Pete, who had been my watch-mate for over a month already by then, as we are re-locating our boat (a 57ft Beneteau) from Southampton to the Caribbean.

Pete and I, initially, banged heads as we were both strong-willed people, but through the daily watches (sailing, cooking and cleaning) we did together, we grew to like each other, trust each other, and started to have loads of fun together, especially during our mid-night watches.

That one night in the mid-Atlantic, I remember very well!
The skies were clear, but it was dark. I mean "pitch dark". There was no moon. Around our vessel, we could not see anything. Meta-physically, it seemed our 57ft boat was sailing at 10 kts into a void of nothing-ness.

At a certain point, around midnight, I told Pete: "I feel we're not alone....." Pete looks at me with void eyes... I tell him: "I can feel a presence around us..... Someone is right here, close to us, very close"..
At that point, Pete laughed at me, asking if I smoked the wrong stuff, or had snorted some of the dried mushroom soup we found in the galley earlier in the day, in a plastic bag. But I insisted: while we could see nothing, and had no visual contact with any land or another vessel for days, I... I... I just could sense someone was close to us. Very close.

We did not have AIS ("Automatic Identification System) back then, in 2006. So, we looked at the radar, and strangely enough, one second we could see a faint blip close to us, and then, nothing..... The blip looked like reflections from a wave....: A small radar-blip and then nothing again... Was there someone?
The blip was quite close to our boat... But it was there and the next second, it was gone. And a minute later, it appeared again.

We always had our VHF radio in the cockpit on channel 16, but had not heard a beep for days. On a hunch, I just pushed the PTT ("Push to Talk") of microphone on our VHF, on channel 16. I did not say anything, but just keyed the microphone on and off, and that's it. And, ......... a PTT-click came back on the radio. Loud, strong and clear. The hair on the back of my neck stood up... Someone clicked his VHF radio, And that someone was someone close by....

Pete and I looked at each other in disbelief. After days of radio-silence, days without having seen any other signs of life - or another vessel -, we heard a PTT-click on the radio. I keyed the VHF radio again, and this time, I said something like: "General call on one-six, this is sailing vessel Persuader Too, at (coordinates)".

Lo-and-behold, immediately came an answer with a clear and loud voice "Persuader Too, this is sailing yacht Daddledu on one-six, hearing you loud and clear".
From the clarity of their VHF transmission, we realized that Daddledu was close to us. We asked them to give a light signal, so we could physically locate them. And a single white light signal, probably from a flashlight, came back......... Daddledu was not just "in our vicinity"....... they were about 100m off our starboard. We could almost touch them.

We chatted on the VHF radio. They were a German crew and on their way to Barbados. They were not taking part in the ARC, as we were. We asked why they were not showing any navigation lights? They responded they had been dis-masted some 500 miles back and hence were trying to conserve as much power as possible, while they put up a make-shift jury-rig to continue some sailing. So they had switched off all navigation lights.
Their skipper was a guy called Jens. Asking if we could assist, he said they were all OK but would appreciate it if we could relay a communication or send an e-mail to the skipper's wife Angelica back in Germany, to let her know what happened to their rig, that they were safe but their arrival in Barbados would be much later than expected.
Which we did.

We never actually "saw" Daddledu. Only saw their single light flash and heard their voice on VHF. By the time daylight came through, we had already passed them by 30-40 miles. A light ping in the dark, and a VHF-voice in the void.. In the middle of no-where. That was our encounter.

From that moment on, Pete never doubted by sixth-sense again.

Picture: Me at the helm of Persuader Too in 2006, in the mid Atlantic, the morning after our Daddledu encounter... 🙂