74. Pan Pan Tomas

I arrived here in Nuku Hiva two weeks ago. And I am sorry that it has taken me this long to provide you all with an update. Particularly since I went ‘missing’ during my passage and there was a Pan Pan and a Bolo issued on my behalf. In this post I will attempt to describe what this means and how I perceived the situation.

It all started with a rogue wave on day twenty. I was sailing through a squall. Nothing serious. A couple of reefs in the genoa and all was great onboard. Back to the film that I was enjoying. When suddenly, a large wave decided to break against Saoirse’s port hull and send a bath tub of water cascading in through an open hatch in her coach roof. All of it landing at the nav station. You could argue that it’s stupid to sail with roof hatches open, and in this case you would be right in doing so. But you have to remember that it was piping hot and that this was a freak wave. I was sailing downwind in open ocean and for water to enter the boat the wave would have to break forward of the mast. If not a once in a lifetime, at least a once in a month kind of wave. Things went from wonderful to chaos in seconds, like they so often tend to at sea. But these things don’t just happen by themselves. They happen because of things you did or didn’t do ten minutes earlier. And it is experiences like this that make you a better sailor. Unfortunately they often come at a price. In this case in the form of a soaked piece of electronic equipment that allows me to download weather information, show people where I am and communicate with the rest of the world. My Iridium satellite router. Not vital to my safety or comfort, but something that makes friends and family more comfortable with what I’m doing and me feel less alone.

So there I am. In the middle of nowhere, knowing that people will be looking for me and with communications restricted to my AIS tracker and VHF. Both needing to be within within line of sight of another radio antenna. With 10 days to any form of land that meant that I needed to find another boat. The only problem was that I had not seen another boat since I left Panamá almost three weeks earlier. I knew from my last Iridium update that one of my buddy boats, Cinnamon, was roughly 60 Nm behind me and on a more northerly course. The only thing I could do was to gybe and change the course so that maybe we would intercept in a day or two. Provided that they didn’t make any changes to their course. The added advantage with changing my heading was also that if my AIS signal for any reason was to be picked up by a satellite or a ship that I didn’t see, it would be obvious that I was still onboard Saoirse.

I didn’t find Cinnamon. Or any other boat for that matter. It took a whole week until a Dutch catamaran, Second Wind, found me. They had been asked by the Tahiti Coast Guard to change heading to get within radio distance and were finally able to report back that all was OK and that I was planning to arrive in Nuku Hiva in a couple of days.

When I finally arrived I was greeted by Mike and Daisy on Traveller in their dinghy. Armed with an anchor beer and a baguette for breakfast. I was told that they had been able to track me all the way via my AIS signal through PredictWind and that they had sent regular updates to friends and family. I’m not entirely sure how that works, but as I understand it I was ‘missing’ for 36 hours before my AIS signal was picked up, either by a ship that I didn’t see or a satellite. In Nuku Hiva I quickly learned that everybody in the anchorage knew about me. Whenever I introduced myself to a fellow cruiser I would hear ‘oh, you are Tomas on Saoirse. We’ve been looking for you’. The reason for this is that there was a Pan Pan with a Bolo issued on my behalf. A Pan Pan is an official emergency call and Bolo means ‘Be On the LookOut’. The difference between a Pan Pan and a Mayday call is that with a Pan Pan there is no immediate threat to life. It didn’t take long for me to get nicknamed ‘Pan Pan Tomas’.

It’s a little overwhelming to know that there were so many out there that followed my progress across the Pacific. And that so many worried for my well-being when my tracker stopped working and there were no more silly posts on fishing lures, gender observations or reasons for happiness. Fortunately though, people like Mike and Daisy, Rob on Avant and my parents took it upon themselves to ‘find me’ and let people know that I was OK. Often communicating with people that they have never met. In some cases people that I’ve never met. I really can’t thank them enough.

I want to wrap up by saying that I actually do have one more way to communicate with the outside world via satellites. It’s called an Epirb. Essentially an electronic beacon that can be activated manually or that activates automatically when submerged. Truly something that should cause concern for my well-being. A piece of a equipment that I hope I will never have a need for. I’m happy enough to be called Pan Pan Tomas. I really don’t need to be called Mayday Tomas.