The English Channel

Last night was rough. Things were crashing in my room. The feeling of the bed falling out from under me, only to run up and meet me again. The boat vibrating with a loud thud. The English channel has its moments. I also discovered that at some point someone put a paper hole punch on one of my shelves. That fell off around 1:30am and I woke up to a floor covered in snow-like round white paper dots. My Chief looked shell shocked in the morning. It was quite bad yesterday afternoon as well. I made everyone in the instrument room watch the documentary "Around Cape Horn", a movie about a 1929 journey of a clipper ship around Cape Horn. It helps put the current weather into perspective.

Now we are in Den Helder. Flat. but windy. Typical Holland I guess.

An Evening Stroll

I just want to write about my walk tonight. Just a walk, after dinner, up on the Helideck around 9:30 as our boat enters the Bay of Biscay. The changes from west Africa to Europe are quite apparent. Yesterday I went for my nighttime star gazing walk at 8:30, only to find broad daylight – of course. Tonight, my walk at 9:30 was merely in dusk at best, and it stayed dusk for the entire walk. In West Africa (or any equatorial location), dark comes in an instant.

I joined the boat four days ago in Las Palmas in the Grand Canary islands, to continue Pride’s journey north from Namibia. A skeleton crew of us joined to take her north to Den Helder (and then onto Norway) – usually there is a full crew of 53 on board. Now only 36 and 6 of those are outside guys doing work around the boat. Everywhere is quiet and empty.

The transit north feels like we are going at light speed. When shooting seismic we usually trod along at a crawl of 4 knots. Now we are going 3-4 times faster. While walking tonight the helideck rocked – a lot. I got more of a hill walking experience, full of short ups and downs, than a flat, sea level plain.

Not only is this trip quiet, but its also uncertain. We’ve been told we have a job in the Barrents Sea, but no one knows for sure. And we may have a job before that. Or maybe not. The configuration may be our maximum number of streamers or it may not. So much uncertainty. But since today is Saturday, we won’t know anything at least until Monday. Life keeps going here, but the office stops. In some ways its nice.

On board, the few of us that are here, are doing jobs that need doing – removing old computers from the racks, installing new ones, preparing for the engineers who will join us in Den Helder. Yesterday we had a mid-day helideck-Hockey game. A few crew have gotten sea sick – the feel of the sea going this fast is much different. Its only the beginning as we head north through the north sea and then further north still. And thus we go further and further north…

(I’ve included some pictures from this past break of me in Scotland and Skiing over easter in Norway, in case I don’t write more about it later)