Tropical storm Franklin finally caught up with us yesterday. The storm had started to become exhausted on its route towards the north, and it was expected to die out today somewhere south from Greenland. We were hit by its tail, the waves were getting bigger and bigger, breaking to white horses and bringing back the dolphins to surf at our bow. The wind was most of the time behind us, and so Esperanza was surfing the ocean waves moving rather steadily. Just before dinner we changed courses, and the rolling got heavier. There was some heavy consumption of sea sickness pills around the medicine locker, the poop deck was getting wet and was therefore off limits, and all the watertight doors and portholes were secured.
As the Espy was bouncing on the waves there was suddenly a blue spot on the radar screen: another fishing vessel. She was contacted on the radio and the captain of the fishing vessel talked a good while with our Spanish campaigner Mariajo, finally inviting us to come on board. The whole deck crew got ready to launch the African Queen - everybody was enthusiastic about going out even though the wind speed was up to 35 knots, but finally captain Waldemar decided it's a no go. We would have been all right with launching the Queen, but getting the passengers on board might have been too dangerous. Besides, it was getting dark. Good night and sweet dreams, better luck on Sunday. Why is it that these things always seem to happen on Saturday and Sunday, the crew's day off?
The following morning dawned sunny and calm, and there was no fog! This was the first time since we left Halifax that we could actually see the horizon. As we got closer to the Flemish Pass the radar screen started to look busy. Just after lunch we identified the first European bottom trawlers, coming from Estonia and Iceland. There was some excitement in the air with people standing lined up out on the bridge wing with their binoculars, trying to get a glimpse of the ships' names and identification numbers. Most of the ships answered our calls on the radio, some were more open for the possibility of exchange of opinions than others, and the African Queen went out again to document the doings of these ships. They seemed to be mainly trawling for shrimp in this area, the nets being towed, then hauled up to the ship, then being lowered down again and again. As I am writing this posting the Queenie is still not back and so we don't know what got caught on film. What I do know is
that the fog is crawling back and we will be losing the visibility again, leaving us surrounded by the blank whiteness of the Grand Banks.
