One thing with the weather here is predictable; if it is sunny in Ketchikan and it is sunny in Vancouver then it is foggy in between. We had a beautiful night sailing north through Seymour Narrows and Johnstone Strait. It was a clear, starry night and the water was calm, flat calm, and as smooth as a mirror. Campbell River, just south of Seymour Narrows reflected itself in the water as if it was a mirror, until we cut through it. It is a pity that most guests are tired from traveling and go to bed early after coming on board, as this was one of those nights you really want to stay awake. It was magnificent.

But fore everything you have to pay a price also for nice weather. By the time we started to approach Alert Bay, just after sunrise, the fog started to rise from the water and that made me decide to go through Blackney Passage which was still clear. If Alert bay is fogged in, you can not see the totem poles anyway so there is no reason to go through the narrow passage at Haddington Island. Thus we branched off to the right and took the other gap between the islands.

Until 10 am. we had nice sunny weather with clear visibility which lasted until the Canadian pilots disembark. We had not dipped our nose for five minutes into the Queen Charlotte sound and a white wooly blanket descended upon the ship. The first thing that happens then is the engine room going on standby. This in done in case we have to do a crash maneuver due to an object popping up out of the fog that we have not seen on the radar. Next we start sounding the ships whistle. The rules of the road require that with restricted visibility we sound one long blast on the ships whistle every two minutes. The time that that was done by hand is long gone and we now have an automatic gadget that does that for us. As you can read, I am not talking about fog, but about Restricted Visibility, that means anything that reduces the distance that we can see from the bridge to below three miles. I have honked the horn in the Mediterranean when the sandstorms reduced visibility to less than a mile, and also while sailing south of Singapore when the forest fires of Indonesia made the view extremely hazy.

It also requires extra lookouts and the captain on the bridge. However I can not ALWAYS be there. Even a captain has to sleep sometimes. So the company policy is that the fog watches are split between the Captain and the Chief Officer with the Captain taking the most difficult and or dangerous ones, or the most inhospitable ones, namely the midnight to 6 am shift. The chief officer has a department to run and needs to be about during the day time. For the captains function the running of the ship is more of a matter of exercising oversight and so I can easily set my own hours. Sometimes that means cancelling parties and other social things but safety is rather more important than having a friendly chat with the guests, even while I do enjoy doing that.

The fog lasted into the early afternoon and then we finally could switch off the fog horn. There was still a low swell rolling, a left over from the nasty weather from the day before yesterday.

Then, 26 June, we only had the wind and the rain but by the time the Veendam made it back in the Inside Passage and heading for Vancouver, the waves started to built up. Now while on the way North again on this cruise, with no wind at all, the waves were still subsiding. So the ship gently rocked while we headed north through Queen Charlotte Sound.

Tomorrow we are in Ketchikan and the weather forecast is unsettled. It calls for 50% chance of showers, which basically means it will rain or it won’t rain. So we will see. There are three ships in tomorrow and we are all converging at the pilot station around the same time.