General Bits and Pieces

Sam’s Log – July 18^th, 2pm (Greenland time zone)

My Friend Action Jackson asks ‘you know what I’d like to see in you blog or Facebook thing, I’m going to tell you anyway, the mileage log and watch list. How many miles you guys travel in a day, how long, how many on watch, how much fuel usage, how much do you carry, cruise speed, stuff like that. On a personal note, from the helm you can hear the engine and notice changes, I would wake up no matter what time if there was a change in ambient noise, cheers. Oh, how many calories in that sandwich’

So here we go:  For instance when I started my watch last night (which by the way was from 3am to 6am) the distance to target, i.e. Nuuk, Greenland was 368 nautical miles to go, when coming off my watch at 6am there were 340 nautical miles to go.  So, we traveled 28 nautical miles in the 3 hours of my watch.  An average speed over the ground of 9.33 knots per hour.  We are running our John Deere 6068 diesel engine at 1800 rpm, and we are 5.1 gallons per hour.  Air temperature currently is 48.8 degrees F., and the water is 44.42 degrees F.   Our current coordinates are N59-49.1 and W53-53.5 if you’re interested.   

We left the coast of Labrador at a small anchorage to the west of Spotted Harbour, called ‘Black Tickle’ Island of Ponds, at 8:45 pm (Labrador/New Foundland time zone 1 ½ hour earlier than Greenland time zone, on the 16^th of July. Our current trip is 668 miles across the Strait.   We travel about 224 miles in a 24-hour day, that number might go up or down depending on sea conditions, but we are making good progress on this trip and so far, (knock on wood) the weather is cooperating. 

We have 4 of us on board and do 3 hours on watch and 9 hours off, this is loosely followed during the day as most of us are in the pilothouse together but during the night we are just one on watch at a time.  Three hours goes fairly fast during the day, but when you cannot see anything but instruments on the dash and there are huge icebergs lurking about, even 20 minutes seems to take forever, an eternity to pass.  As we move further north, we are moving into more and more light at night, with the twilight of the endless sun of the far north creeping up on us, or maybe I should say we are creeping up on it.  For instance, the night before the evening of the 16^th I had the 9pm-12am watch, there was pretty good light when I started my watch and only got pitch black truly about 11:15pm.  Last night I had got up at 12 just to see what the visibility was like, and you could still see the water fairly well at that time, dark twilight but still good enough to see the ice if there was any about. At 3am when I started my watch, there was an orange low glow on the skyline to the east, which got progressively brighter as the hours past.  By 4:30 am I was pulling the screen on the starboard front window as the low angle of the emerging sun was blinding me.

We carry 3400 gallons of fuel on board this trip if the tanks are full. And we carry 1800 gallons of water and have a water maker that we use to top up. There is a washer and dryer on board a true luxury and there are two heads on board, one a wet head (not used for showering) and the other a separate shower stall, this is in the focsle head area.  I prefer to shower on the swimstep aft, at sea wearing a life jacket while showering, and only during times of calm sea conditions.

We can for sure hear the engine from the Pilothouse of the boat, it’s not loud at all, but for sure you could tell if anything changes from an audible alarm. We have on the dash Two large Garmin screens that can show, depth, plotter, data, radar, etc. in any combination. We also have a Furuno Radar in the middle of the dash about the same size as the Garmin screens. Twin Autopilots ‘Skipper Scott is a big fan of redundancy,’ and other alarm instruments.  The Flying Bridge, which has a canvas cover for protection from rain or excess sun, has a single Garmin screen and autopilot control.  Did I say that there is no Steering wheel on the FPB?  Yes that is one of the features of these boats, there is I am told a very small wheel with a suicide knob on it, but that is not currently mounted, nor could I tell you where it is in stowage.  You steer either by twisting the knob on the autopilot when the autopilot is in standby mode at the lower pilothouse station, or there is a jog stick in the upper helm in the flying bridge.  Most all docking and tight maneuvers are done from the higher visibility upper control in the flying bridge. 

On the sandwich question I am guessing 600-650 calories on that most delicious invention of Chef Julio.