Position:- 10* 34’ S 142* E
Course:- 271*
Speed:- 4.9 Knots
Wind:- SSE 5 Knots (Force 2 Light Breeze)
Sea State:- Smooth (1 to 2 feet)
Weather:- Drizzle
Temp 82F
(Wind Sea & Weather are all taken from the Beaufort notation to indicate the given conditions)
Distance to go:- 2502 nautical miles
We are 7 miles North East of Booby Island.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booby_Island
http://www.charts.noaa.gov/NGAViewer/74290.shtml
The pilot has just disembarked from the Kestrel and we are now clear of land for a while as we head across the Arafura Sea.
Talking of Booby Island I have made a booby on the latitude position of the last couple of days as we have been at 10* lat not 9* and I failed to update it correctly on my template three days ago. (apologies to any budding navigators out there who twer wondering where the hell we were going)
Music of the day is a track from Anthony and the Johnsons “I Am A Bird Now” which if you don’t have in your music collection I heartily suggest you put that right. Beautiful and haunting are word that aply to the whole album.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loNU4fVpO8E
In fact I like him so much you can have two tracks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvICM_MU9c8
As we now leave the land behind for a while I am reminded of the smell of the land.
Unless you have ever been on a long sea passage that takes you far enough away from land for long enough you will probably not have experienced it.
I am not talking about the smell of a different country when getting off a plane that we can now all experience. Those of you who have landed in places that don’t have the luxury of an air conditioned cocooned walk ways leading you from the sterility of the plane to the air conditioned blandness of an international airport will know the feeling.
The assault on the senses of first the heat and then the smell. I mention heat as you don’t normally get much of smell with cold countries but hot one normally have some sort of a stench about them.
The first time I ever experienced smelling land was in 1976 on a super tanker (VLCC) called the British Explorer. It was in the days of what was known as “slow steaming” because there was a recession of sorts and oil prices were all over the place.
You would set sail from the UK or Europe and just head in the general direction of the Persian gulf via the Cape Of Good Hope on the southern tip of Africa.
Between 3 and 4 knots was the slowest we would go to preserve our own fuel but make progress at the same time
On the return you would fill up with crude in the Gulf and then would receive orders that said LEFO, which meant Lands End for Orders.
You would slow steam all the way back until the brokers had managed to flog the oil off and then you would speed up and head to the discharge port they had chosen.
I only ever sailed on one VLCC as it was a tedious existence for a 17 year old although at the end of that trip I paid off with my entire wages intact which was the only time that ever happened because normally I would be ashore and partying as soon as was possible after tying up in port.
I remember leaving the Isle Of Grain, at the bottom of the Thames estuary, on December 10th and arriving at Kharg Island in the Persian Gulf on the last day in February, and we had speeded up to normal service speed of 12 knots once we got past Capetown.
Kharg Island is a large sand dune belonging to Iran in the Persian Gulf that was covered with oil tanks, and absolutely noting else, so there was no gadding up the road there.
We were heading south towards the Cape and It had been about six weeks since we had even been within 200 miles of land, then one morning we came out on deck and you could smell earth, leaves, wood, mulch with hints of smoke and dung. It was like a damp old compost smell.
The smell was at first a complete shock that made you just stand smell the air, much like a dog does when it catches a waft of something interesting on the breeze and it is not sure what it is. It invoked all sorts of images and speculation although one of the old hands (who had been at sea since the 20’s) soon broke us out of our reverie by telling us that it was the smell of Africa and it stank even worse close up. From my experiences since he wasn’t wrong.
I remember thinking of the stories I had read of the old sailing ships who would be at sea and away from land for moths at a time and how exciting and at the same time slightly concerning it must have been for those men to smell land days before sighting it . You only have to go back to far in history to find that where you were was as much guess work as much as anything else, due to the lack of decent charts.
At the time of my trip there was a fuel embargo against South Africa going on, however our first cargo was to be from Kharg Island to Durban.
I was excited to hear about going to Durban however when we arrived it was at a Calm Buoy import mooring some 20 miles offshore and although we could see the loom of the city lights and smell the smells of the city there was no hope of getting ashore.
We discharged and steamed back up to the Gulf and loaded up another full load. WE then received the orders LEFO so we slow steamed back round Capetown and up towards the Cape Verde Islands when we were told to speed up and head to Genoa,where we arrived in mid May. I had been on board for just over 6 months and not stepped ashore once during that time.
We had two days to wait for a flight and I remember waking up on the first mooring in a hotel in some piazza after a wild night out in the slightly l sleazy part of town, as was in those days, called the Golden Mile. My balcony windows were open, and the smells of the early morning fresh bread and car fumes mingled in the room along with the remains of a couple of bottles of red wine and her cheap perfume. Nectar for the nostrils.
All I could hear apart from the rumble of the traffic was a heavily accented Italian high pitched male voice shouting “ELLO ELLO, Licky Licky Ice Cream ELLO”
Never in my short life had things smelt or sounded quite so good.
Cheers
Bentley
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