Near collision in the Pacific

I was asleep last night and was awakened by Ken talking—in my half awake stupor –to himself?? Or did we have someone who had dropped by??
We had been sailing wing on wing (where you have your main sail out to one side and your front sail out the other—you need to be sailing straight downwind so you don’t’ backwind one of the sails) as night fell we had seen a light of another boat. We had only seen 2 vessels in the previous 15 days. As the night wore on it became obvious to Ken—I was not awake—that it was on a collision course. We had made sure we were well lit up and he called us on the radio. He was on a southerly course and we were on a westerly—Ken was tracking him on the radar and they talked as the other boat turned and went behind us 1/10 of a mile behind us. It is amazing how difficult it is on a dark night with no moon and no radar (he did not have one, but luckily we do) to estimate whether you are far enough away when you change your course to pass.
What a coincidence that we should have a near collision in the middle of the ocean. The name of the vessel was Spectacle and it certainly would have been all of that!!! We have been wondering how we come up with pictures of our crossing—lots of ocean and sunsets—that would have given us another topic!!

They had hit a weather buoy a couple of days earlier—these are huge structures 7 feet wide and weigh 500lb. Apparently they are padded and they were sailing full speed but slid off the side of it. We dread to think of it ending up between our amahs under our catamaran—it is a shipping hazard one doesn’t think about—we would have a permanent anchorage—we do have a list of locations of some but boats seem to be finding them elsewhere. They are meant to be lit but I am not sure of the maintenance schedules. We did hear the location of one on the SSB radio which was 10 miles from us one morning but never saw it.

Next entry, bar new excitement will be from Fatu Hiva.