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DON'T YOU HATE IT WHEN THAT HAPPENS?!

It was midnight when the skipper went below to get his head down. We were halfway between Santa Cruz de La Palma in the Canary Islands and Mindelo in Sao Vicente, Cape Verde Islands off the west coast of Africa.

At around 0100 hours, I spotted two tiny lights on our port quarter but a long way off on the horizon. I decided that, if I could get our 71' schooner to sail herself for a few minutes, I would nip below and get the radar going, some time in the next twenty minutes or so which would be quite soon enough.
The seas were a little lumpy and leaving the helm was not going to be quite as easy as I had hoped but there was still no cause for concern, I thought.

Just ten minutes later, I was horrified to see a huge ship steaming straight towards our port quarter at all speed. Two powerful lights showed her to be a very large vessel. As all the horror stories I had ever read about yachts being ploughed under by supertankers raced through my mind, I banged on the aft hatch, directly behind the helm and over the skipper's head, and brought him running to see what was amiss.
"Ship" I gasped, "quick, turn on the radar and see if you can raise her on the VHF".
Without pausing to get a visual sighting the skipper took my word for it and, while the rudder fought my shaking hands, he hailed the monster, still coming at us and stared into the radar. Just as he started up the companionway steps to announce that he had received no reply and could find nothing on the radar screen, the rest of the rising crescent moon appeared above the horizon.
I had been watching the upturned tips come up... You bet I felt silly!

Linnet Woods of "Leopard Normand III"

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