Onboard the Arctic Sunrise as part of the Trident: we don’t buy it ship tour.

Captain Waldemar back on the bridge at last.

As we speed along England’s southern coast, the mood is cheery onboard the Arctic Sunrise. The sea's calm, the sun’s out for the first time in days and the ship’s been scrubbed from bow to stern, mopped, painted and generally reclaimed from her extended stay with the Ministry of Defence. And, despite the delays, the we've made excellent time; we look set to reach London on time, where Mayor Ken Livingstone and others are waiting to welcome our Trident: we don't buy it ship tour to the city.

I'd never realised quite how much love goes into keeping a ship like the Arctic Sunrise shipshape. One of my favourite moments from the blockade was when the Sunrise was being pushed around by four tug boats as the police prepared to board. While I was running around in a vague kind of general panic, I bumped into Po-Paul, the French Canadian deckhand.

“They’re going to board!” I shouted to him. “Never mind that,” he said as another tug crunched into our hull, “what about our poor, beautiful paintwork!”

As soon as the ship was released nearly a week later - even as it was being escorted out of the Clyde to the soundtrack of The Clash’s “I fought the law - and the law won” (the MoD pilot’s choice of music) - the crew was flying around in a blur of checking for damage, fixing, tidying, scrubbing, mopping and painting.

There are crew members from Argentina, Brazil, Thailand, Hungary, Russia, Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, Italy and the UK on board, all working around the clock to keep ship life ticking over - in between being arrested, racing to London in record time, running ship open days and holding press conferences. I'll be posting some of their stories here, inbetween other updates, over the next few days...