We left Great Keppel Saturday morning with a calm sea and the wind off our back quarter. We had a great sail and by evening we were ahead of time. So we reefed the sails to slow us down. Although we were reefed Nivi still managed to reach 6.8knots. With half a moon lighting up the sea making it a nice night time sail.
During Andrew’s shift he noticed a faint red light on what looked to be the horizon. Suddenly the red light changed to green. Andrew checked the AIS. Nothing. Checking the radar and nothing on the horizon, just intermittent wave reflections.The green light was moving fast across the horizon. Thirty seconds later the light wasn’t on the horizon. The moonlight lit up the the sails. It was a yacht going past us only 200m away, with very dim navigation lights on the bow. No Tri-light, no stern light, and obviously no radar reflector. Hopefully they had seen our lights or on radar otherwise the outcome could have been very different.
Later in the night the wind dropped and we had to motor the last hour. The sail was so good we arrived outside of Lady Musgrave atoll at 3am, so we have hoved too and are bobbing around till daylight
