Monday, August 8, 2016

Sea Day in the North Sea: 5 August

Day 16 At Sea

During the evening we sailed south down the North Sea off the coast of Norway. I think I slept in until 0630. The morning was spent working on the log and blog. The Court of Neptune met. (the Court of Neptune is any gathering in the Neptune Lounge of deck 7 guests to discuss anything.) Scuttlebutt has it the Captain is rotating off the ship in Rotterdam for a vacation.) Our new Captain has been Master, Rotterdam before and is a senior Captain in the fleet. Another port lecture, lunch and the morning was gone. The afternoon was spent continuing with processing the log, some blog prep and photo processing. By 2 pm the seas were building, we had some rain and swells appeared from the West, almost abeam.

Noon report: 56º 01.55'N and 005º 30.03'E. North Sea. Course 183º. Speed 16.3 knots. Wind west at 23 knots. Apparent wind a couple of points forward of the starboard beam at 23 knots. Humidity 68%. Depth 170'. (Shallow here.) Temperature 66ºF or 19ºC. Sunrise at 0550 and sunset 2136. Distance from Eidfjord 168 nm, to next port 283nm, and total voyage 4,050 nm.

Late afternoon the sky cleared and we found a lot of traffic out there. Upbound and downbound traffic coming close from the narrows 'tween England and France. There are plenty of oil rigs out there also.


Uncle Hal (Holland America Lines) took advantage of a sea day to provide guests with the first billing statement of the trip. As it is Uncle's policy that no tipping is necessary, each guest is charged $13.62 per day to cover gratuities for the crew. In addition, a 15% service charge is added to bar service items, which includes bottles of spring water, wine, beers, soft drinks and liquor.

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