Today we were under the influence of a minor weather system full of rain clouds. As there was no trade wind to push the Rain clouds from the Panama area up into the Western Caribbean Sea, the clouds kept hanging around in the Colombian Basin and on a regular basis emptied their contents on the decks. The clouds were too wide to sail around and thus people got wet if outside on a few occasions. Still the weather for tomorrow in the Canal is forecast to be quite good and any rain that falls now cannot fall tomorrow.

 I still have to tell the story of the tanker on the course line, when we sailed out of Aruba. This was something unusual and again caused by the strange weather, the weather without wind. Aruba lies to the north of Venezuela and there are always a lot of tankers waiting for orders. Mainly going into Lake Maracaibo at a certain time. The regular winds that blow the strong trade winds, pushes them all the way over to the Venezuelan coast. These tankers, and there are normally about 25 or 30 of them, do not anchor as it is too deep. They simply drift. As they are all roughly the same size and of the same construction (oil barrel on its side with a propeller behind it) they drift at the same rate and thus maintain more or less the same distance to each other while being blown to the South West. Every so often they start their engines, steam back to where they started and then let themselves drift again. Without the trade wind, it has been wind still near Aruba for the last two days; they are only under the influence of the current that now strongly flows the other way. So all the tankers are now drifting over to the Aruba side. One was coming so close that the captain there had to do something and he started maneuvering to get further away from the island. He was not counting on the fact that suddenly a big blue cruise ship would come charging out of the port. Tankers do not maneuver very easily and his course change got him nicely and exactly on my intended course line. I do not think that he was happy to see me. He should not have been there and that made me a bit wary about what he might do next. So I decided to go behind him, showing clearly my starboard to his starboard and staying about a mile away. It brought the added advantage that the guests on the outside deck could now see several large tankers all around, as the easy way out was to sail through them. Our tanker friend decided to sit there and wait until I was gone before he continued the maneuver, whatever that was.

So we did not have a dangerous situation, just something very peculiar caused by this unusual weather. Next time when we visit Aruba and the Trade wind is blowing again, they will all be on the South America side again. Some of these tankers do not go very far at all. When loaded, some might go to the refineries in North America, but quite a few just cross the water and dock at Aruba, Curacao or Bonaire where there are refineries as well. From there the finished product is then transported to its final destination.

We have been scheduled to arrive at the Cristobal breakwater at 05.30 in the morning. If the convoy sails as it should then we should be out again by 17.00 hrs at the other side. In the morning we should have a bit of sunshine, but what we get at the other side is anybody’s guess as the Pacific Wind is blowing towards the shore, so the clouds will heap up in the Balboa area. We might get a good shower or two.