The Captain's Log is below.

Read the Crew's Views.

Back to Captain Logs Index

We have been motoring since midnight and will likely continue to do so through tomorrow and into Friday.  A large high pressure system has been moving east across our location all day and wonât be entirely gone till later tomorrow.  Meanwhile the weather prognosticators have been hinting at a significant low headed our way for more than a day and it is now showing signs of being true.  So I am heading for Nova Scotia in the interest of taking shelter rather than tough it out.

My interest is not merely to avoid some discomfort.  I would like to replace the fuel we have used and then be ready to depart as soon as the wind turns favorable as the low passes by.  The wind is due Friday evening and Saturday morning.  As the counter-clockwise motion of wind rotates as the low center passes by just east of us, the wind will go northerly and then northwesterly, which should give us an opportunity to set off again towards Ireland.  The time spent waiting ashore getting ready to take off again should not add up to a waste of time, as we will be less beaten up and topped off with fuel again.  Plus we should be able to sail fairly quickly if we time things properly.

But diverting to an unscheduled port is a trick in these days of national security.  For instance, we are not permitted to land in Canada without first giving them a formal heads-up that we are intending to land.  This notification needs to include all the passport information of everyone on board and must be presented prior to landing.  In fact, this information is supposed to be made available a full 94 hours before landing.  However, there are provisions for shorter ãadvance noticeä time in various circumstances. Seeking shelter is one of them.

To help get all this completed in a timely manner, I will be asking Pride IIâs office to assist with making the contacts necessary to the Canadian authorities.  I am sure the office has better things to do than to receive additional work from the ship.  But I do not have all the information aboard for making such an entry with a quick turn around as part of the dynamics. 

Meanwhile ship board organizing continues.  We have established a routine for doing shipâs maintenance while underway through careful scheduling of each watch during their ãstandbyä time.  We have also scheduled for the cook to have a day off once a week during the crossing.  To accomplish that, we may share the day's work across all of the watches as they are ãon watch.ä Or we may designate the ãdaily duty personä as cook for the day, which will necessitate taking them off the watch rotation for that particular day.

We celebrated a birthday today.  Crewmember Alan Morse was treated today to food he likes.  Instead of a cake, it was a huge pan of very dark, soft, and gooey brownies.  Breakfast was pancakes and for reasons I did not hear, there were hard boiled eggs abounding.

Cheers,
Captain Miles