Until this point, the ship’s log has been kept by the watch officers while the ship is underway. Starting today, trainees are filling in a rough log after their turn on helm. They’re learning that we record our position every hour, on the hour, and that we also make hourly notes on true wind direction and force, swell height and swell direction, barometric pressure, visibility and weather including clouds. Of course they all have to learn how to make all these assessments. They have a bit of experience from doing this on night watches in Lunenburg, but now that we are at sea there is much more keep an eye and now they get to learn how it’s all properly observed and recorded.
This is our second full day of motoring consistently southward. Some wind has picked up, but it’s from the direction we want to go. According to the forecast, it is supposed to back towards the east, making it much more useable for us. We continue to check in with Herb of Southbound II for his weather forecast broadcast daily on the single side band radio for vessels at sea in the North Atlantic, the weather fax consistently spits out drawings of North Atlantic wind and wave and surface forecasts and we’re getting weather by email as well. Somewhere around 25-26 north latitude we should pick up some tradewinds. With all the other vessels we heard Captain Tom Gallant in the mighty Schooner Avenger north of Bermuda bound for Lunenburg too.
Chibley seems to be back to her usual cool indifference, stalking around the deck and experimenting with naps in different bunks. We had a small bird as a passenger for most of yesterday afternoon, flying around the ship and landing on the transom to rest between flights. Chibley was unaware of our feathered passenger, which is just as well. She is pretty hard on small birds.
Donald made one of his specialties for breakfast – meat doughnuts – these are Grenadian/West Indian specialty. They are called “bakes”. You may wonder how meat and doughnuts go together, but it’s like a jelly filled doughnut, except the jelly is corned beef. There were cheese doughnuts for the vegetarians, and this morning the doughnuts were accompanied by oatmeal and sliced cantaloupe. Lunch featured one of my favourite Donald soups, rich with beans, potatoes and squash, along with homemade bread, pasta salad and leftover pasta with tomato sauce. Apart from headwinds the weather is fine and seas aren’t big either. So everything is good.
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