11 October 2012; At Sea.

The frontal system laying over the Bahamas is intensifying and will continue to slowly gather in strength over the weekend.  Not really stormy weather but very strong winds; strong enough to be called a tropical storm now, one with the nice name of Patty . That has caused an instant change in the surface current running through the Straits of Florida. The axis of the Gulf Stream has been pushed further to the West, e.g. closer to the Florida coast and that means that the counter current which normally flows south along the rim of the Great Bahama Bank has more room. More room gives more push and so the current managed to get into Old Bahama channel, and that is not really nice for us. Normally we have about a 0.75 of a knot of current with us but now it was the other way around. We had nearly 1.5 knots against us. The wind did not help either, due to the weather front it was not from the East pushing the ship forward; now it was from the NNE, pushing full on the Starboard bow. In the end it meant that I had to put an extra engine on line to ensure that we kept our average speed to arrive on time in Fort Lauderdale.

Patty sitting in the North Atlantic with the intended track to the SW, which will bring her over Cuba on the 15th.

Patty will remain strong and is eventually supposed to move SW towards Cuba. At least that is the predicted path for the moment. By the time it will do so we should be long time gone, but it will mean that it will be a breezy run when we go back to the Caribbean Sea. It is a funny thing with naming these storms. In Alaska they just call it gales and as they have one every 3 days during the winter, nobody even thinks about giving them names. But as soon as it comes to the Tropics, both Pacific and Atlantic, every storm gets a name. As a result a lot of people think it must be really bad weather then. Which it is not. A cruise ship has quite often 45 knots of wind blowing around her, either in combined winds (ships speed and wind force) or when going through such blow holes as the Gulf of Tehantepec.  The main reason of course for giving Tropical Storms names, is that they might grow into Hurricanes. The chance that this tropical storm Patty will grow into a hurricane is quite small due to lateness of the season, but also most Patti’s are known to behave themselves, so I do not expect too much trouble.

In the mean time my thoughts are already far ahead to the cruise of November 23, when we go for a month into the south pacific. Apart from the normal navigational planning, we also have to review all the new legislation and regulation coming at us. Especially those that deal with over boards and emissions.  The USA is going through a change in regulation as far as the use of ships fuels is concerned in certain areas and not all States are doing the same thing.  Once passed the USA, there are French/European Union rules to verify as Tahiti and some of the other islands are French territory. Then for Christmas Island we are in the Australian hemisphere and that is different again.  We have one officer, the S.E.H. or Safety Environmental and Health Officer whose task it is to verify all these things. He is helped in this by a database, the matrix as we call it, that contains all the environmental information for any port, area or country as far as is known.  The challenge is always to verify this information as it keeps changing, not only what we are supposed to do, but also where we are supposed to do something.  The exact line of the boundary’s.   You cannot start that planning too early due to the changes that might still occur, but you also cannot start too late as you have to adapt some of your operations on board. So we start this verification process about 6 weeks before the actual date.

In the evening we caught up the Norwegian Pearl and soon after the Norwegian Jewel caught up with us and in a nice line up we sailed into the Straits of Florida. The Pearl and the Jewel were going to Miami and will eventually veer off to the West, while we have to go further up the coast to Fort Lauderdale.

Weather map for tomorrow. Wobbly in the Straits of Florida and strong winds over the land.

Tomorrow will be a breezy day, and I have ordered a tugboat as a plan B, in case it is too windy for the thrusters to handle.