18 February 2010; heading north towards the Falklands.

After all the excitement of Antarctica we had today a quiet day at sea. Last night at 9 pm. we pasted the 60oSouth and that meant that we were officially out of the treaty waters. That also meant that we were entering “depression alley” again, the zone between Antarctica and the South American continent where storm after storm passes by. As a result the weather in the Falklands can often be very bad and a call here has to be cancelled quite frequently. Hence reason enough for me to check the weather forecasts all day long. At the moment it does not looks too bad. Bad weather predicted the day before yesterday is going over today and that might mean that we are lucky tomorrow. We are now sailing in a sort of tail of the weather system going over the Falklands and it is hazy and sometimes really foggy. I expect in the course of the late afternoon or evening that the rainy quarter of the weather front will come over and then behind it, it should clear up. If that happens, then the Prinsendam and the sunshine will arrive at the Falklands at the same time.

The bridge is now gearing up for our next challenge, our trip up the Amazon. The coming ports, while going up the coast can be considered routine sailing, going up and down the Amazon is certainly not so. The ship has been there before a few times and that means that we can use all the information gathered in the past to put our voyage plan together and then we only have to verify if the information is still current. Thus the navigator is in contact with the agent to see, if there have been new charts issued for the Amazon. They normally do that once a year but the announcement always comes through late so we ask the local agent to verify with the pilot organization. Most likely the newest charts will already be obsolete by the time we get there as the Amazon river keeps changing its route all the time but at least we will comply with the requirements of having the latest up-to-date charts on board. Whatever “up-to-date” might mean in this case.

While the navigator was thus occupied I could turn to some of the more mundane tasks of the captain’s job. Ship inspections and parties. Today we had crew cabin inspection again and I try to cover all the crew cabins in the course of a six week cycle. Focus is on cleanliness, state of repair and compliance with the company ships house rules. Then as this was the first open sea day after a period of sightseeing and ports, it was time to have a luncheon again with the people who occupy the top suites. That took me until 1 pm. And then after the voice from the bridge, it was time to double check the work of the navigator for arrival tomorrow. To see if the approach courses are to my liking and if we want to drop the anchor there where the port authorities want me to. We have been assigned anchorage number two, which is the optimum one for the tender distance to the town. However in very inclement weather I want to be further out to view the situation for cancelling the call or waiting for improvement and that means that it is important to have a plan B ready. Thus we noted plan A & plan B duly in the chart and I figured out my approach, taking into account wind drift and the minimal allowable safe margins for passing the rocks. That took an hour and then it was time to crash for a few hours.

In the evening I had a dinner party, as our oldest crewmember onboard had turned 75 years old recently and that I cannot let go by un-noticed.

Tomorrow we are in the Falklands, and things are looking reasonably good. I hope it is, as we have a wedding onboard and these people came all the way from Australia to get married onboard the Prinsendam in Port Stanley Falklands.