MOB practising

14 March 2015

Update of March 15th, by Jan ten Dam:
“We still are sailing under the ‘iron sail’, with a fair Arabic wind. The weather forecast tells us that this will be the case for the coming days. If there will be any wind, it will come from a wrong direction. Unfortunately the ‘Oosterschelde’ cannot use her sails under these conditions. So, we have to use the engine. Due to these circumstances it isn’t practical to go to a harbour for a day to wait for a change of weather. Hopefully the weather will change and give us sailable wind. This all doesn’t mean that our voyage is getting boring. There is almost no wind, but the sun is shining, the air is very clear and the swell is decreasing. So it’s nice to be on deck.
About 40 miles to go and we will reach the continental shelf. The deep ocean will change in seas with a depth of about 100 – 200 metres. This will also mean that de swell we all got used to, will become shorter. We are nearing the English Channel and can see more ships every day.
Today it’s time to adjust the ships’ time. This afternoon we will change the time from -2 to -1 hour, English time so to speak. For that reason lunchtime was already at 12:30. Just after lunch a few whales were spotted, but they were only seen for a very short time. While a lot of people were watching for these animals a yell sounded: man over board! Luckily it was clear we were part of an excercise. Woody had thrown a buoy in the sea. One of the trainees kept on pointing at this buoy till an able seaman took over. It took about seven minutes to get the buoy back on deck, where Woody was able to declare the patient alive and kicking.
Today Woody concluded the workshop Celestial Navigation. The position of the ship calculated was about the position according to the GPS. So, now we are sure we are going in the right direction.”