15 Nov. 2011; At Sea.

And so we sped in the direction of the Panama Canal, with the wind and the swell in the back. We were sailing just north of Colombia for most of the day but in the afternoon we started to cross that part of the Caribbean Sea that they call the Colombian Basin. At least the underwater part. Further to the West is another such area called the Clark Basin. Basins indicate underwater area’s which are relatively flat.  There might be undulations of about a few 100 feet in height difference but compared to the depth of the water 10,000 feet or more, the sea bottom is considered flat.  Thus when we sailed away from the coast of Aruba, which is nothing but a sort of mountain whose top sticks above water, we basically sailed gently over a downwards going slope until we came to the flat sea bed of the Colombian Basin. It would be amazing if we could see this whole area without water. It would put our whole perspective of the oceans in a different light. Still that is not going to be the case, so we just have to continue to wonder about what goes on there in the depths of the ocean.  As a navigator you have time to wonder about these sorts of things while keeping a good look out, out of the window for other ships. To be a good navigator you need to have a bit of a contemplative character while standing your watch, as not all the time things are happening. My wife calls it “worse than watching paint dry” and cannot understand how we do it.  But then I cannot always understand people who do not appreciate “the sound of silence” on occasion.

So we all have different interests and specialties in our genetic make-up that makes us good in what we do. A reason why an engineer is so different from a navigator and both are different again from hotel staff. And what is not in our genetic make-up we can always learn. That was one of the items today. Looking into curtains. In the past when I was chief officer, the ships upholsterers reported to me and they taught me a lot about carpet laying, curtain hanging and chair and couch upholstery. That training and those lessons are still useful to me when doing my inspection rounds. You get experience in what can be done, how it should be done, and how long it will take to do something. All very useful when dictating job orders for general upkeep. One of the challenges with a ship on the move is that we cannot carry spare fabric with us for each pattern that we have on board. Or not enough to re-upholsterer everything that is the same.  A second challenge is that some fabric and/or carpets come from North American sources and some from European manufacturers and we are not always sailing in the right area for the fabric that we need. The final problem is that some of the carpets and fabrics are so special that they are produced to order and can have a long lead time.

Thus when something gets damaged, we sometimes have a problem as we cannot replace it with the same material. A cry for help then goes out to our Seattle Interior Department with the request to work magic. There is very little they can do if the material has a lead time and then we have to make do.  Sometimes that calls for rigorous decisions and that is where they do like to call the captain in.  If an unusual decision has to be made, that is what he is there for and if it is wrong, the buck stops with him. Captains are really handy guys to have around sometimes…………..  To make a quantified decision about an upholstery issue, I am very happy to say that I had my chief officer’s experience with maintenance, as it now really helps when fussing around with fabrics.  So today the challenge was curtains without having the exact material on board. Thus I picked out of several options, what tuned in the best with the general atmosphere of the public room and what appealed the most to my own taste. And what was possible to hang in that location and would be practical and effective.

Tomorrow we are in the Panama Canal. I have been ordered by the Panama Canal authority to poke my nose through the breakwater at 05.30, and so to line up in the convoy for going through. The wind, which was quite strong this morning died off during the day and is now in synch with the weather forecast.  If that holds then we will have a good start of the transit, with maybe a shower somewhere midway. We will see, this is the month of change and it gets more unpredictable by the day.