Coming across a ship when you’re not sure of its purpose or activity can be slightly worrying, when it happens at night that worry is increased. After spotting a ship on AIS yesterday afternoon which then moved away was fine, we weren't sure what it was but discounted it when it moved some distance away from us. But later in the evening it reappeared, this time we identified it as a fishing vessel and discovered there were three in very close proximity. Just our luck they were right on our course, after some discussion we changed course to completely avoid them, but with their constant change in direction, speed and position it was getting more stressful. At this point with the spinnaker still flying we choice to leave it up till after passing the fishing vessels, this seemed to take an age and as we were nearly in line with them the wind began to increase and quickly. Mum was already on deck as she was a little worried about passing the fishing vessels but Henry was asleep, I shouted down and he came on deck too. With the wind still increasing at this stage gusting at around 35 knots the boat was tearing along at over 10 knots. On the foredeck it was not very comfortable and rather wet form all the spray, luckily by now we have got the process of dropping the spinnaker down to a fine-ish art but when the halyard got slightly tangled it added an unwanted complication. Eventually with the spinnaker tied down and no damage down we headed back to the cockpit, reduced some of the main, then in true British style I put the kettle on!