15 May 2012; At Sea.

This morning around 08.00 hrs we passed the border between Oregon and California. Now we are truly getting in northern waters. The temperatures remained today at a nippy 55o F but that is still a lot higher than what is going on in Alaska, where Skagway reported one degree Celsius today. No doubt that will improve greatly in the coming days but for the moment the change is hitting hard when coming from warm Mexico. The “low hanging” clouds lifted this morning around 03.30 and just after 4 am I could go back to bed again. The wind started to blow a bit harder and will cool down the ocean surface more than enough, so I am not expecting anymore hazy weather until we get a wind still period again. Since passing Cape Mendocino on the Californian Coast we are steering one straight course following the 125o 11’ West meridian. That keeps us away from all State boundary’s, exclusion zones, marine sanctuary’s and coastal traffic near Cape Flattery. That is the entrance to Strait Juan de Fuca. We will start approaching that area around 02.00 hrs and be inside the strait around 05.00 hrs

More excercise area’s. We are staying out of the Green bit completely before entering the strait. This is another Marine Sanctuary. The blue squares are navy training area’s which are quiet at the moment.

With the strong northerly breeze, we had about wind force 6 blowing at times and with it came very clear visibility. That made it possible to see all sorts of stuff from a great distance. Clearly noticeable was the fact that less than a week ago it was really bad weather here. One can always see that by the amount of debris that comes floating by. Single fishing buoys are a great indicator and today we passed plenty of them. Round red buoys, either used as fenders on a boat, or as lobsterpot markers or as end of the net indicators. In the bad weather they wash overboard or get loose from their anchoring line and then start drifting away. If we had a scooping devise on the ship, we would have been able to amass a nice collection today, In various shapes, angles and materials. We even had a midsized mooring buoy coming by with on top of course an obnoxious looking sea gull.

The amount of whale sightings reduced. Yesterday we had lot of them, all presumably on the way to Alaska but also all of them swimming the wrong way (going south) but today they were very few and far in between. It might be that they are veering away from the coast here to go up to Alaska as we normally do not see that many whales in the Strait Juan de Fuca. They are there but there should be a lot more, if all the whales would pass by there. So I think that they angle away from the coast when they are past San Francisco and head straight for the Gulf. We will see a lot more when we come to the Glacier Bay area which can be reached from the Gulf via West Inian Pass north of Sitka.

The bridge is still busy with the Alaska preparations and we are working our way through the company rules and regulations. We had a joint session with the engineers on how to reduce the smoke from the funnel while maneuvering, starting up the engines and regular engine husbandry. Plus showing them where they can expect confined water standbys and what that might entail. We all have to work as closely together as possible to have as little impact on Mother Nature while sailing in Alaska as we can achieve. Thus every routine is reviewed, every engine system is fine tuned and all the communication between bridge and engine room gone through. This is the most critical part of our whole operation as it is the human factor. We work with several nationalities, who speak different sorts of English, have different dialects (wait until you hear a Scottish engineer answer the telephone) and different ways of processing information. So we discuss, review and train until we are all confident that we have all the procedures under control and are comfortable with them.

Tomorrow morning we will approach Victoria around 11.00 hrs and once docked approx. 300 Canadians will leave us, as it is the easiest way from them to get home. Quite a few told me that they live on Vancouver Island and leaving tomorrow saves them the hassle of getting across from Vancouver. It looks like a sunny day with little wind and temperatures in the high sixties. After that another sunny day in Vancouver and then the weather will get colder.