Saturday, 3 August

There’s a fog upon LA...and our friends have lost their way…  

            -The Beatles, “Blue Jay Way”

We had gone through some dense fog banks most of the previous afternoon and into the evening, and we woke up in a really dense fog bank.  It was like living inside a ping-pong ball: the same homogenous whitish-grey in all directions.  The sun was barely visible as a faint disk through the fog.

And when I fired up my iPhone compass to get our lat/long, the compass said we were going north-northwest, while it was clear from what I could see of the sun that we were going east or east-northeast.  I felt completely lost: totally surrounded by fog and no reliable sense of our direction.  At first I wondered if the iPhone was working properly, and I reflected that if I had had to rely on it in a survival situation, I'd probably die.  

But later I remembered something.  I remembered that any magnetic compass will be affected by two things: (1) variation, or the off-centeredness of the magnetic north pole, and (2) deviation, or the influence of the ship’s magnetic signature.

Being this far north -- by the way, we were at 45-38-0 N, 53-29-56 W -- the variation was much more pronounced than it would have been in more southern latitudes. I could probably have gotten the variation and deviation corrections from the ship, but I decided to let it slide.  I was just happy to realize that my iPhone compass probably worked after all.

At 10:00 we had a 2-hour tour of the ship, with one of the maritime cadets was our guide.  We went to the bridge for about 20 minutes where the watch officer explained all the instrumentation.  

The bridge

(Photo by Sebastien)

Then we went down to the engineering spaces for about half an hour, and the Chief Engineer (or CHENG) walked us through the engine compartment and all the associated spaces, like the electrical generators.  

Ellen and the ship's engine 

Ellen and two of the generators

After that we visited the stern mooring station...walked the length of the ship through the containers to the bow mooring station..and ended up in the RO/RO (vehicle) spaces.

The innards of a cargo deck

(Photo by Sebastien)

Empty vehicle bay

(Photo by Sebastien)

All in all it was an interesting two hours, and I didn’t mind having had to give up my morning routine.

After lunch, at 15:30 pm, we had a mandatory emergency drill.  On the one hand it was kind of a Keystone Cops sort of affair because we had – at various times – three different sets of instructions; on the other hand, it was informative and worth the effort.

It began with a review of the immersion suits...the things we would put on if we had to jump into the sea and wait for rescue.  Here is Ellen putting one on...

After that we reported to Muster Station B, on the port side of the ship, with our life vests and immersion suits.  The crew was there, too, and we got a head count.

Muster Station B (yellow rectangle with red dots)

Now...the red dots.  The red dots are for individual people to stand on.  Each red dot has a number, and by seeing which red dot is the first one without a person standing on it, it is apparent how many people are there.  The devilish simplicity!

Then we had a demonstration of how the dingy would be lowered, and how the life rafts would be handled.

Then we went back to Muster Station A, at the stern of the ship, and discussed the lifeboat and how that might be used.  

The lifeboat was a fully encapsulated affair that was positioned on a slide pointing down to the water.  In the event of use, we would all climb in, buckle into our seats facing backwards, and then the boat would be sealed shut and launched (i.e., slid) into the water.

The lifeboat in launch position 
(Seen from Muster Station A)

We had the opportunity to try climbing in and buckling up, which all of the male passengers did, but none of the female passengers did.  Climbing down the steep incline was tricky, and buckling into the seats was a bit more challenging than I would have expected.  But I’m glad we did it, because should we ever have actually needed to do it, I would have known what to expect.

Climbing into the lifeboat

(Photo by Sebastien)

At some point during the lead up to the drill, the Master informed us that – although the ship was scheduled to arrive in Liverpool at 17:30 pm on the 8^th – he was going to speed up a bit and try to arrive about 12 hours earlier.  The reason, apparently, was that he wanted to arrive at high tide.  Since there are only two high tides in a day, his only other option besides 17:30 was 12 hours earlier.

Sometime after lunch we left the fog bank and the sky cleared up. It turned into a beautiful day at sea.  I went up to the very top of the ship...the roof, so to speak.

The roof had the spot where helicopters could winch things on and off the ship.  So presumably if you were on the ship and got seriously ill or injured, this is where they would take you -- in a specialized stretcher, of course -- and a helicopter would send down a winch to pick you and and take you to a hospital or whatever.

The "roof" looking port and somewhat aft 

The "roof" looking forward

In the top photo above, the little white cube on the left is actually the top of an elevator shaft.  I climbed up there, and I had an almost unobstructed view in all directions.  I stayed for about an hour, and as I hung out there I was reminded of a passage from "Moby Dick."  In it, Ishmael is up in the mast head, high above the ship, watching for whales.  As the ship rocks back and forth, and he can see in all directions, he sinks into a philosophical reverie and ponders the universe.

On a day like that day, it was easy to do the same thing up on the "roof."  Standing on top of the elevator shaft, I, too, could see forever in almost all directions, and as the ship gently rocked back and forth, it was as easy for me as it was for Ishmael to let my mind wander off into philosophical corners I hadn't visited in years.  It was truly one of those times when it was easy to understand why people have been choosing a life at sea since time immemorial.  

After dinner it was still absolutely gorgeous out, and Wilke (one of the Germans), Sebastien (the French man), and I sat outside on the port deck and chatted for about an hour.  It was totally relaxing with the late-day sun shining warmly…the cool breeze blowing…and the ship bobbing up and down slowly. 

Lounging on the deck

Our evening position was 46-19-38 N and 47-54-45 W.  We advanced the clocks an hour after dinner, and we were now in the same time zone as Praia, Cape Verde.