05 July 2009, At Sea, off the East Coast of England.

If there had not been the tide issue with Greenwich and the long sail out, then we could have made our next port in one night. However we had the tide and also we are supposed to have at least one day at sea during a cruise and thus we spent a day going very slow on the North Sea. The weather was very changeable today, with sunny spots and rainy weather and it is impossible to say when it will get dry again. There is very little wind in the system now laying over England so the rain clouds do not move very fast. Going North meant that we were quickly out of the shipping lanes and we did not see much traffic at all, except the oil rigs.

The oil rigs cover an area that forms part of most of the middle and northern North Sea. It starts roughly at the Amsterdam – London line and stretches all the way to the coast of Norway. So I did not have to go very far to find a few of them that we could have a good look at without getting too close. Most of them are located on the shallow banks of the North Sea so I did want to get too close anyway. Still enough water for the Prinsendam to sail over but why look for complications if you do not have to. Thus we stayed about 3 miles way from the various platforms but as they are very big, everybody still could have a good look. The one at Boulton gas field was the most impressive one, as it was burning off vented gas. For that they had a long pipe sticking out sideways from the platform itself and the platform is protected against the flames and heat by an enormous water curtain, that was almost as high as the platform itself.

Photo of a typical oil/gas rig in the North Sea with an off-shore supply-vessel in attendance.

Most platforms have guard ships on standby nowadays. These are off-shore vessels whose main duty it is to keep other ships from straying too close to a platform. There have already been several collisions with these platforms. Each collision has the potential to cause a fire which would result in great danger to the crew on the platform and would result in major structural damage as well. While not even speaking about any pollution. Most of these collisions were with small fishing boats. Sometimes because the skipper fell asleep, sometimes the skipper was convinced that he could sail between the pillars (!!!!) and sometimes due to engine troubles causing the fishing boat to float against one of the pillars. However there have been a few instances with larger ships as well, mainly due to human error and since then guard ships are employed. An expensive option but the alternative does not bear thinking.

Thus we saw several platforms in various shapes and sizes before we changed course in the early afternoon and sailed on a meandering course towards our next port of call Newcastle upon Tyne. This is the only real sea day that we have this cruise so most standard HAL activities were crammed into this day. Called for a busy day, but there was no other option. With a around Great Britain cruise, the ports are so near each other that even a night at sea is a long time. This cruise is called the Celtic Legends and we are calling at different ports where the Celts had had some prominence some time or the other in the past. As a result we call at ports in England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Ireland, Wales and the Channel Islands. The only major place we are missing out on is the Isle of Man, but I believe that is due to another cruise ship already scheduled to go there.

So tomorrow we are in Newcastle upon Tyne, named after the New Castle built there by the son of William the Conqueror and it looks like a rainy day. It probably rained a lot in the days of William as well.

Note: Dear Readers please advise how you are doing with the download link to email that you can press on the blog. Just after my change over to the HAL website there were some issues and I wonder if they have been resolved. If not, let me know and I will contact the web master again.