We left at 7am from the dock of Lois and Dave's sailing vessel, Walkabout, in the Solomon’s Island. Our goal was to try to do 60 miles down to Deltaville, VA. We were trying to make up some time due to yesterday’s weather delay.
John enjoying the ride
Andiamo’s new toy (and safety feature) was an AIS System to receive and transmit our vessel information to other large or commercial vessels. We were motor sailing down the bay when a coast guard ship transmitted that he was escorting a submarine and all boats were to stay clear. I certainly could see them on our AIS system but thought we were OK since they were not calling our name over the radio like they are suppose to do. We had a substantial rain fall the night before so it was still foggy. All of a sudden, our AIS system told me that we had a dangerous situation and I saw the coast guard ship, a submarine, and another escort ship. I had to immediately turn to starboard to get off the collision course! It was a little too close for comfort both on our end and the Navy's end. About a half hour later, an F18 took two passes over our boat; we were not sure if it was on purpose or just the Navy playing games. We realized afterwards that we were not transmitting our info; we were only receiving the AIS signals. We needed to figure out why we were not transmitting.
Andiamo and cruiser
We continued our merry way down the bay and the favorable winds started to pick up. It was a great sailing day and we did get to Deltaville as planned. We had dinner in our cockpit and watched a colorful October sunset.
An October sunset in Fishing Bay
We were planning on leaving at 7am again the next morning and it should be an easy ride to Norfolk.
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