10 April 2012; At Sea.

It our utter amazement it was a very small world outside when the dawn arrived. As soon as it became daylight we ran into a very low hanging cloud. We never use the F word on the bridge F.O.G. but prefer to talk about restricted visibility or about very low hanging clouds. We had such a cloud this morning and it was hanging very low. The bridge called me just at sunrise when they saw it lying in the distance.  I had a good look at the weather outside and then I realized what it was: Arctic Sea Smoke.  Due to the nearly wind still weather in this area for the last few days it had created the perfect environment for this sea smoke to develop.  Further to the north, abeam of Cabo San Lucas, it is a phenomenon that we expect because cold and warm current come together and with the right wind it can develop here quite easily. In the same way as there is a lot of restricted visibility on the Grand Banks east of Canada. But south of Cabo, just off the coast of Mexico, before we cross the Golfo de California, it is a different story.   However today the conditions were just right.

In the last few days, there had been very little wind here and that meant that the sea surface temperature could warm up and remain warm. Then a very gentle cold wind started to blow from the North from the Sea of Cortez area, down through the Golfo de California.

It is difficult to take a good photo from the ship, but this picture from a river in the winter shows it quite nicely.  (Photo courtesy: somewhere from the internet)

The warmer water releases moisture faster than this colder air can absorb, that gives condensation and bingo, you have Sea Smoke.Normally this layer of white condensate is not more than 200 feet high. Often when we sail through it, we have the ship itself in the smoke but the bridge above it. You see that quite often in San Francisco when the Golden Gate Bridge rises above a white wooly blanket that covers the whole bay.

This time the height rose above the ship and that meant that we had to go to standby for reduced visibility. Engine room  on alert in case we would have to give full astern, the ships whistle going every two minutes, all watertight doors closed and the bridge team amended with the addition of an extra navigator. In this case me, but if it lasts longer, then I would rotate with the chief officer.  For this situation I knew that the sun would burn it off quite quickly and indeed by 09.15 we were out of it. We call it “burning it off”, but a better phrase would, “warming up the air” so that more moisture is absorbed.

Later on in the day the wind picked up from the North West and with that I was not very happy as it meant that it might blow in Cabo San Lucas bay. The wind was not in the weather forecast of the morning and it took until late afternoon before the weather guru’s had picked up on it. The wind/ high pressure system in the Caribbean Sea had moved, causing a completely different flow over North Mexico and California and that caused  wind to start blowing down from a high pressure system further North in the Pacific Ocean.  The only thing I can hope for it that it does not get too strong and it will not start pushing the swell around the corner of Cabo into the bay. With our assigned anchorage number 3, the ship will be fully exposed to it and that will affect our tender service.

Wind itself is not an issue as it does not affect the movement of tenders along the loading platform. Waves and swell do, and that makes it harder to get in and out. If there is wind in the bay, then I also cannot revert to plan B which is staying on the engines. When it is nice and quiet I can park the ship between anchorage nbr 1 and the Rocks to the south. That greatly reduces the tender distance and also keeps the ship out of the swell. But when there is wind, doing that becomes dangerous as the ship will drift too quickly towards the rocks.  We will see tomorrow.

Today we had another nice day and that makes it that this cruise is shaping up to be a very nice one.