Happy With Force 7

Posted by Dave at 08:20 AM, November 11, 2004

(C) Greenpeace

Wednesday afternoon, still in the North Atlantic. As we move later into the year, we notice how the weather is changing. One low after another comes in, which means bad weather - most of the time. It's funny how relative it is. Yesterday we had force ten for a while, but it's down to a seven now. We're happy with seven. We used to print out our weather faxes, but now our radio operator gets them through the Internet while he downloads and grabs email. He puts them in our folders on the computer, which saves paper. It doesn't give the same feeling of expectation though. We used to switch on the weather fax, search for the right channel, listening to the squeaky and cracking radio-sounds and after ten minutes you'd find out what the forecast is.

The technology is amazing these days. I know that sounds like a cliché, but it's true. Especially communication, which has improved a lot. But also using the GPS and radar is something you tend to take for granted. When I did my course we spent some time on celestial navigation and using the sextant. But it wasn't much, because of the limited time available, unfortunately. We also used a calculator which is basically like a small computer. You put the data in and the answer comes out. Our captain does the calculations in his head. This is the best opportunity for me to learn how to use the sextant properly and, more important, the calculations afterwards, without a calculator. It's a bit of a struggle, but slowly I'm getting there.

Maite, deckhand, knows "a little" about the stars. This is how she puts it, but for me, she's a walking encyclopedia. One comes up on the horizon and she'll tell you not only which one it is, she'll also tell you the mythology behind it. Amazing.

All we need now is good weather. And the forecasts don't look too good. There's no sun to take a bearing of, no stars at night (well, they are there, together with lots of dark clouds). So its lucky that we have a GPS and the radar.

- Maaike