The following is written by Satu, one of our deck crew volunteers...
Welcome to the bridge of the Esperanza, just passing over the Faraday Fracture Zone on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Our bearing is 256, our course over ground 257 and our speed 9.7 knots. Wind comes from West South-West and its force is about 2. Visibility is good, even though half an hour ago we passed through some mist. The radar shows no ships within a 48 mile radius. The sea reaches a depth of over 2000 meters underneath us, and the Faraday Seamount is about 70 nautical miles north. We are close to having reached half way to our destination Halifax, Nova Scotia.
The Esperanza is being steered by an autopilot. This doesn't mean she can be left alone. No, every moment of the day one of the three mates or the captain is on duty, taking care that everything is okay up on the bridge. Each watch lasts for four hours, and during the night from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. - a deckhand is accompanying the duty mate, keeping a look-out and doing regular rounds to detect fire and especially at heavy seas to see that everything on board is in order.
The past week I have been up on the bridge every night from midnight till 4 a.m. I am accompanying our Dutch 3rd mate Mathijs, who has been happy to teach me some of the secrets of the bridge. I guess that makes his work load a bit lighter when I insist on doing the positions on the charts or keeping the radio log. On open sea the watch is not too challenging. We have an alarm on the radar warning us if any ship is closer than 8 nautical miles from us, although it is always more important to keep good watch with our own eyes. The most important task left for us to do is to take care that the ship stays on course. Factors such as wind and current can make the Esperanza drift off course. Last night for example we had to correct our course several times because we were drifting too far to starboard.
The safety round means that about once an hour I go down from the bridge, checking the whole ship for anything unusual. The round takes me from the radio room through the lounge, mess and galley to the engine control room, laundry, wet room and the heli hangar. The ship has an extensive smoke and heat detector system, but nothing beats your own eyes and in case of fire your own nose. The fire alarms have been tested several mornings this week, and from experience I can assure you that the ringing is strong enough to wake the dead.
Nothing warns us about the sea life, though. Last night we were standing on the bridge wing when I suddenly saw some white stripes in the dark sea. "Torpedoes!" Mathijs joked. But the weren't torpedoes. They were three dolphins that headed for the Esperanza, and in the pitch dark night of the Atlantic Ocean we could hear them singing while playing at the bow.
