Late last night when we disembarked the pilot and sailed out of Oslofjorden we had our first surprise, being that the weather was not as bad as expected. It was only forecast to get better, today, during the day. In the morning the wind was indeed as forecast with a Northerly wind force 5. At the same time gale force winds up to Beaufort 9 were forecast for the Dover area. So I thought, this is going to be interesting. Then to our utter amazement, the wind died down completely and the sun came out. Some remnants of the swell remained but it was eerie, so nice it was during our last afternoon at sea. I could not believe it as it went against all the weather patterns on the forecasting charts. The low and high pressure area’s around England just collapsed, filled in, petered out and disappeared. That meant that a high pressure system near Iceland could take over and in the evening it started to blow again but from the North and that meant the wind in the back and no more worries. Tomorrow it will be windy on arrival, at least at the pilot station but Tilbury is nice and sheltered compared to the coastal towns of Dover and Harwich. Still the weather is very unsettled and thus I have ordered a tugboat for docking.

All these low pressure systems are forma hurricanes and tropical storms that work their way across the North Atlantic. They bring wind and dump a lot of rain over the British Isles. So much, that there were flood warnings announced in the past days. Whether these weather systems come over the British Isles or go North to the Iceland area depends on the way the Jet Stream blows. For our next cruise we have to hope for the best and pray that the Jet Stream veers to the North. If not then it is going to be a very interesting cruise to say the least.

web oil rig Guard Vessels on duty.

However, today we enjoyed the un-expected good weather that suddenly appeared in the late morning and stayed with us until the early evening. With no rain cloud in the sky and crystal clear visibility we could see the oil rigs from the British oil & gas fields to the West of us. These come in all shapes and sizes. Some of them are just a pole but others consist of three or four interconnected platforms that together look like a metal castle on stilts with cranes as turrets. In general these oil platforms are located outside the main shipping lanes to reduce the chance of collisions. Still the sea is free and sometimes ships do decide to cross the North Sea by sailing in between. As that could be extremely dangerous and result in a big environmental disaster; the platforms that could be endangered by a collision have guard vessels stationed around them that contact any craft that is coming too close. That results occasionally in complete shouting matches on the VHF if a fisherman is refusing to cooperate and stubbornly continues fishing near and sometimes even under the rig (When given the chance). As we all know fish like to gather where the presence of a fishing boat is the most annoying. (That is why they are also always in our way, even when we are in the vessel traffic separation schemes.

Luckily the courses we run when coming from Oslo down to the Thames somehow miss the fishing boats. The northern part (Skagerak and the coast of Jutland) is dangerous for bottom fishing due to enormous amounts of un-exploded ordnance on the bottom of the sea. Then further to the south we have the junction of several traffic lanes with lots of shipping and maybe the fishermen find that too dangerous themselves. So we did not see much of them today.

Tomorrow at 05.30 I will be at the pilot station in the Thames estuary as I want to be docked by 09.30. Our official arrival time is 12.00 hours but we have made arrangements to have H.M Immigration come onboard at 10.00 so they will have two hours to clear the ship and then everybody will still be able to go ashore before the official arrival time. We provide service whenever we can.

The weather is supposed to be blustery on arrival but with the wind dying down shortly after, followed by the chance of a shower and then in the late afternoon the skies are supposed to clear. For the coming days the weather forecast indicates better weather each day. Unless, the whole system collapses again as it did today.