Trade winds and paranoia

Ah, the trade winds! Sunny clear days, and 15-20 knots of a steady breeze at our back. Only very rarely do we have to turn on the engine and motor for a bit, if the wind fizzles out at night. Conditions right now would be absolutely perfect if only the swell could finally assimilate behind us; we could pretty much just surf our way to Hawaii. Hot days while sailing guarantee that our laundry load to wash while in port will be slightly smaller than anticipated, as those days are clothing optional! Ha!
So, we have an AIS system on board, which receives signals from boats over 60 feet that are required to transmit their location, heading, and speed. One night we heard the AIS alarm go off, so for the first time in a week we knew we were within 10 miles of another vessel. We scanned the horizon and thought we saw it way off in the distance, even though it was hard to know for certain due to the swell. About a minute later, the vessel changed their heading to come straight at us, and at 19 knots no less. This would easily outrun our 6 knot cruising speed. Well, I'm not sure if sleep deprivation was kicking in, or just our paranoia of being hundreds of miles from help in the middle of nowhere, but Jon and I freaked out!
Thoughts like "why would pirates have an AIS aboard?!" or "aren't we too far from Mexico to worry about those drug boats!?" or "where did I put my spear gun?" shot back and forth. We stared at the AIS and the horizon, trying to figure out what this guy was going to do. Eventually, he just ended up going parallel to our course. It turns out, he must of had radar aboard, saw our heading, and figured that was probably the best course of action to get through the swells somewhat comfortably. Let this be a lesson kids: get your sleep, or you may talk yourself into a panic for a totally absurd reason!
Speaking of sleep, we gave our autopilot too heavy of a load while we were trying to catch up on some. It turns out that Brizo couldn't handle the direction of the swells along with the amount of wind that night, so a few of her gears were pretty much chewed up. Luckily, Jon still had the old wheel-drive unit that came on our boat originally. We switched it out yesterday, and are back with a functional "3rd person" on the watch cycle. Brizo II will be looked after a bit more carefully.
We've been trying some fishing, but no luck so far!
Only 1300 nautical miles to go...assuming we head in a straight line. We are hoping to be in Hilo in 10-11 days. Everybody take care, we miss you all back home!