21 February Pirates abaft the beam

Waiting one more day to make the passage to San Andres was the right decision. We motored north out of Linton Bay at dawn in no wind conditions. An hour later a heavy squall went over us and was replaced by ENE winds; engine off and sails up.

Forty miles out David was snoozing and I was on watch. I saw an AIS target on the chart plotter approaching us at 22 knots from the south. The information on AIS gave the name of the vessel as letters and numbers and it's destination was logged as Disneyland. Strange. I woke David, told him I had sight of a fast rib making a direct course for us. We're off the coasts of Panama and Nicaragua so it could be pirates. Bad people. We maintain our course. There are two freighters in close proximity. David appears with the flare gun. We maintain our course and watch the rib through the binoculars. It's an orange rib with blue flashing light and eight men on board with guns. Then as they come closer they are revealed as a US Coast Guard patrol and we relax.

USCG on patrol

Turns out this is a regular patrol boat. The Captain asks us to reduce sail so he can ask us questions about captain, registration, last port and destination. When he has these the boat drops back while they contact base to check our credentials. Fortunately we pass muster and are allowed to proceed. Today these were the good guys.

We waved our fellow nauticos bon voyage, let out the sails and continued on to our Colombian island.