ARE YOU ALONE OUT THERE

[cat man do]

Saw 1 yacht, 1 freighter and 1 fishing vessel between Brisbane and New Cal

Brisbane to Vanuatu went between 4 vessels one night (about 100nm) from top of New Cal, no other sightings

Dave

[Troutbridge]

At the risk of thread creep, when putting a route (Gran Canaria to Barbados) on my chart plotter, the track was shown as a gentle curve. This leads me to believe that GPS plots a great circle route rather than rhumb line. Perhaps I'll cross check this with my sextant (assuming I can remember how to use it ) when I sail the route next January! Oh, did I mention I'm retiring next week and casting off the end of the month.
Yet again (to get back on topic) I find myself agreeing with Maxingout re traffic. Incidentally Dave, you ought to get a 'cut' from the drogue and para anchor people . Expensive but they look just fine, hope I never actually have to use them

[clausont]

It seems to me that if there were that dense of a concentration of vessels in most cruising areas, you would never hear of stories such as the couple with the dog and parrot that drifted for 95 days before landing on Fanning island (just as an example).
I don't know - that is just my thought.

[READY2GO]

Out of curiosity, what is the longest anyone has gone without seeing another boat?

[cathyoz]

Originally Posted by jheldatksuedu

I would say one per day would be a good It's a 38 foot Hughes, you can see pics on my website. It's even priced to Go too. After I sell it then I am ready to go too.

where is your boat exactly?
that i could look in "Google eath"
and how much it cost the marina or yard where is it at the moment?
and for how long can we leave it a the marina ?
thanks you

[Pelagic]

As NoTies said GPS has made the sea lanes very narrow and even sailboats try to follow an optimum route if conditions allow.

Doing a Transpac:

In the 70’s ………………………………twice a week

In the early 80’s with Transat working occasionally………… 5 days a week

Early 90’s with GPS…….daily with vessels on exact reciprocal courses thousands of miles from shore

[Hud3]

We are slaves to the machine!

I've even read about "Waypoint Rage" in the Bahamas! The chartbooks and guides give waypoints for traversing the various banks and shoals, so people plug them in to their GPSs and turn on the autopilot. The rage happens when another boater is bearing down on the same waypoint and forces you to steer manually.

I assume this happens more frequently with power boats. HaHa!

[Brent Swain]

Carribean and Atlantic are busier, but I've sailed from BC to New Zealand and seen only 2 or 3 ships offshore the whole way.

[READY2GO]

Louis
How long did it take you to sail to New Zealand? What kind of boat did you sail?
Thanks for responding.

[Sandero]

I've sailed back and forth to the caribe from Southern NE many times. It is rare not to see other vessels during the passage. Usually they are apparent in converging on a landfall and less scene midway. Out there you might see commercial traffic on headings crossing your path.

Interesting thing about seeing vessels offshore. We did the Marion Bermuda race in 91 and as I recall there were over 200 boats in the race. The start was amazing to see them all tacking out of Buzzard's Bay. The 8 or 10 classes (can't recall the number) were staged, so you hand bunches of about 10 vessels in each class.

We started in the middle but did rather poorly for the first 12 hours or so as it turned night time we saw scores of white stern lights ahead. But we had a better point of sail and we slowly caught up and passed many boats. I assumed that we would have vessels in sight for the entire race with binocs. By the morning less than 24 hours into the race there was not a single vessel in sight!

A storm was coming up the Gulf Stream to meet the race and now we had huge seas, squalls... rather icky weather. Many yachts suffered. One lost their rudder. When we made it through the storm and the Stream, we scanned the horizon when we were atop some huge rollers (the surfing was amazing now on a beam reach). WOW captain, we spied a yacht from the first class! Had the finish line been there we might have won the race, but as the winds died we couldn't keep up and ended in the middle of the pack where we started. But as we came into Bermuda in the evening the sailboat lights were all about us and by day break there was a steady stream of yachts making way to the finish line. But for the intervening 3+ days we say not one of the other boats!