Among Ghosts, Oil Fields and maybe Ben Affleck?
Posted On Tuesday, 22 June 2010 at at 11:36 by Kapten IngerupPosition 57 33 N 000 48 W 09.30 UTC
When I woke up at 02.45 UTC before my night watch the fog had almost disappeared, puh, it was sort of a relief. Fog is one of the great dangers a sailor has to deal with. On the North Sea there are numbers of fishing boats without radar or AIS, they are basically ghosts appearing when you least expect it. Like yesterday when our visibility at one point was no more than 50m and Cecilie and I thought our eyes were about to pop out because of the constant staring into the fog, a ghost suddenly appeared. On starboard hand side I saw something white approaching in the fog: BOAT BOAT!!! The first seconds it was hard seeing whether we were on collision course or not but the next second we judged it would almost certainly pass behind us and therefore gained speed to be on the safe side, puh! It wasn't a small fishing boat, it was a large one and a collision would have been devastating...
Not only do we have to lock out for ghost while crossing the North Sea, also oil fields. I can't count the number of oil fields I see on the paper chart here next to me. I haven't seen them yet for real though since it has been too much fog on my watches. If we will get close enough Cecilie and I are considering a quick stopover at one of them. You see oil fields make us think about the movie Armageddon, in which a pretty young but very attractive Ben Affleck is acting, maybe we can find some other hot oil men at the oil fields?!?! We haven't really mentioned our plan to skipper Lars yet, we don't know whether he neither deckhand Glen will find the idea as tempting as we do... Anyhow, we are doing good speed and if the the coming weather forecast is as satisfying as we are hoping, it looks like we will have time for another stopover, the one in Skagen.
PS 1: Have you noticed the latitude in above position? This morning around 06.00 UTC we passed the Meridian of Greenwich, we are no longer west of Greenwich, we are east and very soon in familiar waters.
PS 2: If you want to read more about the adventures with Safari they have an excellent blog: www.sailing-safari.com
Love/First Mate Sofia
Be careful in getting to close to the oil rigs. They see themselves as fixed installations and if getting close you will most likely be approached by a guard/supply vessel making sure you're not getting any closer :)
Great blog!
/Magnus