15 October 2008, At Sea.

Late last evening we entered the North Atlantic Ocean and we are now traveling South East towards the Amazon River estuary. The course is basically one straight line, as the land, the South American continent, curves inwards from the most eastern point of Brazil towards the Caribbean Sea. We will reach that most Eastern point tomorrow around noon time and then we will follow the coast inwards towards the estuary.

Preparations for the run up and down the river are in full swing. The Brazilian authorities demand many documents to be forwarded, especially as the ship is not a regular visitor, and that keeps the purser very much occupied. Part of the proceedings before going up the river is the clearance of the vessel at Macapa which normally takes about 4 hours. The authorities then sail with us and the remainder of the clearance takes place while the ship proceeds up the river. Thus the more paperwork we can take care of before we get there, the better it is. Long live the email.

Another thing is the fresh water consumption while we go up and down the river. We make most of our potable water ourselves. However on the Amazon River we cannot do that, as there is too much sediment, red mud and other debris, in the water. If this sediment would enter the evaporators, than these would shut down completely, they would silt up and get clogged. So we have to be frugal with the fresh water consumption. This means that we stop washing the decks in the morning, we reduce other cleaning activities to the legal minimum, we reduce the laundry output and we also ask the guests to join in by turning off taps and taking short showers. My advice is always, drink beer instead of water and shower with a friend. The first chance to load water again is in Manaus, where we fill the ship up for the return trip down the river. This is standard procedure for all the ships that travel up and down the river and with a little bit of help from everybody; we have never had any problems.

All the way to the Amazon we have the current against us. This is called the Guyana current and it can run off the coast of Brazil with a velocity of up to 4 miles in the hour. In combination with the opposing winds, the ship really has to go against the elements to make it down there. Thus while the engines are producing 20 knots, we travel towards our destination with barely 17 knots. I am aiming for an arrival at the Amazon River bar around high water time. Then there is the most water at the shallow estuary entrance that forms the end of the river. All the sediments that the Amazon carries with her are deposited here, as due to the widening of the river, the river current is greatly reduced and thus the silt can sink to the sea bed. Ocean currents will carry that sediment away eventually but it still results in a large shallow area,that we call the bar. It takes about two hours to cross the bar. As soon as the estuary gets more narrow (it goes from about 50 miles width to 5 miles width near the pilot station) the deep of the river increases. In nautical terms a shallow area in front of a river is called the bar. As the Amazon is a big estuary river, it is a very big and wide bar.

From the bar it is a 170 miles up river to the Clearance and Pilot station of Macapa. This first stretch we do without pilots, as the river is wide, deep and does not change position that much. Further up river we need the local knowledge of the pilots, as the river changes position daily and the river banks are continuously shifting. More about that, when we sail on the river.

The weather is still very good. Last night we had a very windy spell for a short while, with winds of up to 40 knots, but it subsided very quickly again and we do not have any idea where that wind came from. There was nothing in the weather charts. Tomorrow the wind should die down and it should be sunny. Good weather for our King Neptune ceremony.