At night, while Claire (my wife) was on watch, she noticed a radar target ahead which was in our path as we approached Samoa, as such she altered course twenty degrees to avoid the target.  The target then moved directly in the path of Pendana.  Again, Claire altered course and again the target moved.

It was at this time that Claire woke me and explained the situation.  With a spring in my step, I went to the Pilothouse and witnessed for myself what she had described.  Very odd! Very odd indeed!

I decided to re-tune both radars quickly and re-engage the target via our commercial radar system to obtain fresh target data.  Again the target had a direction and speed which varied between 3kts and 12kts and yet again the target put itself directly in front of us.

At this point I said to Claire “to hell with it, we will increase speed and head directly towards it and I am not planning to alter course anymore” to which she agreed.

With the spotlight on, and when I say spotlight I mean SPOTLIGHT. Pendana is fitted with a HUGE spotlight which is fantastic to have as it would light most stadium’s given half a chance.  With the spotlight on, I was surprised that I couldn’t see the target.  Again, I decided to continue with our speed and heading.  At this time, I asked Claire to go downstairs and lock all the doors while I continued to use both the spotlight and FLIR night vision to try a locate and identify target – but to no avail.

Within about four hundred metres of the target (1300ft), the target started to move, at speed, down our starboard side and towards the stern of Pendana at a distance of about 200mters/750ft.  It was then that the target got closer to the stern and I must confess to feeling like it was time to alert our head of security, Caesar the Magnificent, who is a 50kg Bernese Mountain dog whom, given half the chance would certainly have something to say to anyone trying to board his boat!

Again, I shone the spotlight towards the stern of our vessel and tried to identify the target with our FLIR system, but without luck – I simply couldn’t see it.  The target then took off, at speed, down the port side ahead of Pendana and literally vanished, not to reappear until it was about three nautical miles to our stern.

Did it feel like we were under attack?  Sure did.  Was it scary?  Just a little.  Did I feel like I could be dusting off some of my old ice hockey skills? Yep.  Was Caesar at the ready? He sure was. But…… why couldn’t I or Claire actually see the target.  At 200 meters / 750ft everything is clearly visible on the FLIR system and even a half decent set of human eyes or binoculars would do the trick!  Was the target in fact, so close, that the angle of the FLIR was wrong?

As the target was so close why couldn’t we hear the engine/s going?  Was it the rain, sea state and wind that made their engine sound vanish?  There certainly was a target that was acting aggressively over a sustained period of time, but why couldn’t we see it with our own eyes.

That question it appears is to remain unanswered.

Was it a pod of dolphins?  Albatross?  Whales? A local fisherman? A couple of teenagers having a bit of fun or was it what we suspect?  I guess the reality is that we will never know, but either way, we did report the matter to the Samoan Police who did appear to be pretty interested in what we had to say.

The Samoan authorities believe that more than likely it was a local fisherman, who is known not to run with lights on, laying out a net.  While plausible, both my wife and I are not so sure and as such felt it necessary to alert other travellers to this beautiful part of the world of our experience.

We are all safe and survived whatever it was.  The lesson learned here is that 9.5kts are about 20kts less than would have been very helpful on the night!

James

www.pendanablog.com