Our friends Marcel and Karen called us to tell us we were anchored in that same exact bay as some new sailing friends they had just recently made. They told us to scope out the bay and see if “Jack Pine” was anchored anywhere near us. Sure enough they were just two boats away!
On board a lot of sailboats, some of us have AIS–Automatic Identification System. It is used by ships and boats and traffic control stations and allows information on the position of nearby ships and shore stations to be exchanged electronically. It’s like your location tracking on your phone you use to stock your friends with. On a boat, we can do the same if the boat has AIS.
When Marcel and Karen told us about ‘Jack Pine” we were in the middle of lunch, so we decided that after we finished we would dingy over and say hello. A friend of a friend is always a fun thing. But, before we could finish the last bite, ‘Jack Pine’ suddenly pulled up anchor and motored away! Drat!
Later in the day, when we re-checked the weather, we decided to pull up and motor over to the other side of the island where the winds would be calmer the coming day. Sure enough, there was ‘Jack Pine’ again! It was dinnertime so we figured we’d just wait and say hello in the morning.
After we got up and going, we looked over to see ‘Jack Pine’ pulling up their anchor once again. Double Drat! We missed them again. Only this time we joked that perhaps Marcel alerted them and they we’re getting out of dodge before we could get our dingy down and go over to bother them.
As they headed out of the bay, they suddenly turned in our direction and headed our way!
Thanks to Marcel and Karen, and a little AIS spying, we were finally able to meet the Canadian crew of ‘Jack Pine’. Very AWESOME people! It was fun to have them float along side us and say hello and visit with them before they sailed off. We took some pictures to prove to Marcel and Karen that we finally met up at last. They seem to be a fun and adventurous couple and we hope to see them again. In the meantime, we’ll be following them on instagram.
