Hi Greg,

It's good to be back. I think I'm getting too old for these long upwind deliveries. I gotta say though the last leg (Hawaii to SF) this time was atypical. The wind was often light to moderate (too often nonexistent, we motored over 100 hours) and while rarely aft of the beam, often it was a very comfortable beam or close reach.

We have and use the tools (don't leave home without your AIS!) though our autopilot is somewhat old fashioned (not interfaced with anything). But we recognize and fight the temptation to sit back and rely completely on them. Take AIS for instance. I absolutely love it. I love the ability to reach out and call another boat BY NAME! When called by name on 16, freighters answer virtually every time. When calling "Motor Vessel at about latitude ww degrees xx minutes, longitude xx degrees zz minutes", you're lucky to get a response half the time. There have also been times when they have called us by name: "Sailing vessel Loose Pointer, this is the motor vessel Dawn Star just exiting the channel westbound. What are your intentions?" In tight and/or limited visibility situations, anything that makes communication easier is a good thing.

There is a dark side to AIS though. It is so good at giving us an hour or two warning when another AIS equipped vessel is in the area, it is tempting to rely on it to the exclusion of doing the visual horizon checks as often. The problem is that while all of the big freighters have it, MANY of the fishing vessels don't. More than once, I've been late doing a horizon check because I was cooking something, going to the bathroom or whatever only to be shocked that there was a light close enough to us that I immediately got on the VHF and tried to make contact to make sure they knew we were there. As you well know, these visual horizon checks are especially important when coastal cruising down the west coast of Mexico and Central America. There's all kinds of poorly lit pangas, nets and fishing boats out there and none of them are transmitting an AIS signal.