Now we are 26...

Thank you all for your birthday greetings.

It's been a fairly busy few days. Thursday was my first birthday at sea and for some reason I volunteered to do a few hours of chipping when I wasn't on watch. It's a reasonably messy job and very noisy but it can be very therapeutic watching the rust disintegrate beneath the onslaught of a needle gun. By one of life's coincidences it was also the second mate's birthday so it was a fairly festive evening. As a birthday treat I was given the following day's morning watch off for which I'm very grateful.
We crossed the equator on Friday morning. Also that morning we held a large fire drill involving a simulated fire in the Trawler Winch Room with plenty of simulated smoke. It was once again very hot in the fire suits even if there wasn't an actual fire. I felt very dehydrated afterwards. Although I wasn't in either of the fire teams (I spent the actual drill running various errands) I was kitted up and sent in afterwards whilst the smoke was still thick to have a look around and see what it was like trying to navigate a machinery space with limited visibility. It was not at all easy. Afterwards I refilled the air cylinders before going for lunch expecting a very heavy afternoon.

The reason for this is that in the afternoon we held the Crossing Of The Line Ceremony, and the less said about that the better. Besides, I'm fairly sure I'm not supposed to give any details away to the uninitiated, or 'infidels' as some on board call them.

Saturday has been a study day to allow me to catch up on some reports for my SVQ portfolio. I've spent most of the day working on the bridge as I don't really like the idea of working in my cabin. It did give me the opportunity to take a snap of some birds that were fishing near by. Could anyone identify this bird for me?

Approaching the Equator

Monday 9th:
As well as the usual watchkeeping today we tested the emergency steering gear. This is located aft where there are two motors which control the rudder angle. These are controlled from the bridge under normal operating conditions but can be controlled locally in emergencies. After a day of sunshine it gets very hot down there. The two methods of local control are to either manipulate the steering pumps via solenoids (a bit like a button but you have to use a key to press them in) or you can disconnect the motors entirely and manually position the rudder using a wheel directly. The mechanics of the system dictates that when using the wheel you turn it the opposite way to how you want the ship to turn. The only indicators at the station are a gyrocompass repeater and a rudder angle indicator. All steering orders are given by the bridge via a communications headset or a sound powered phone. It can be very difficult to maintain a steady course using this system - it's much harder than steering from the bridge where you can see the effect you're having and look at the skyline.

Tuesday 10th:
Today the skies have been completely overcast with a thick layer of cloud. Probably several layers in fact. It is completely black outside as I write this. Although the temperature is still around 27 degrees centigrade and it's very humid. There have been lots of tropical showers.

One item of interest was the passage of a group of eight Little Egrets, a bird similar to the stalk, flying past very close to us. The cloud cover had eaten all the light so taking a photo was not easy, especially at the speed they were moving but I managed to grab one or two. They can be identified by their black bills and feet. On of our ABs, a Mr Lester Jolly, positively identified them.

Cape Verde

This morning we reached Cape Verde. They are a series of islands off the west coast of Africa that rose quite impressively out of the water with their peaks lost in a blanket of cloud. Despite their name however they seem to be quite an arid place and there is a lot of haze in the air from the Saharan dust blown by the prevailing easterly winds of the area.

As we didn't have a courtesy flag to fly the Captain declared a competition last week to make one. The flag flown was made by the Bosun's Mate 'Binns', obviously a talented flag maker. This is the first time I've ever sailed with a Bosun's Mate on the crew. For a few reasons, all of them outside our control, we had to hang around for five hours before anything happened. The webcam image looked a lot like we were at anchor but instead we were simply wandering back and forth outside the port limits waiting and trying to keep the wind off the beam. We are very much under the influence of the North East trade winds, the winds which used to take sailing ships across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas.

Once again I sent metobs reports at six this morning and evening. Since a certain thing was mentioned on this page recently it has now been decided it is my job to check the wet bulbs as well as various other bits and pieces of meteorological equipment. I'll be careful what I mention in future.

Although it has been hazy all day, with total cloud cover this morning, I was able to get my first half-decent evening star sight today. I still find it very difficult to pick out the stars when they can't yet be seen with the naked eye. It is looking for a pinprick of light on a vast expanse of blue sky and isn't easy.

We're now on route for the Falklands, which we should reach in about two weeks. We should be crossing the equator early on Friday morning this week, hopefully on my own watch so I don't have to get up early(er) to get a photo of the GPS as we cross. I have photos from both of my previous crossings so it would be a shame to miss this one.

Entering the Tropics

As I type this we have just crossed the Tropic of Cancer. It's been a very warm day.

This morning I completed metobs and obtained a pleasingly good star sight from Sirius (1), Rigel (2), Aldebaran (3) and Venus (4). Below is a plot of what I obtained. Each line is a position line given by the measured altitude (height above the horizon) of the body and its difference from the calculated altitude for our estimated position (marked by a red cross on the diagram). The observed position is marked by a blue dot in a blue circle.


The scale of the plot is one little square is one square mile. This means that my observed position is within about half a mile of the GPS position - which is fairly close and certainly good enough for an ocean passage (or at least it was in the good old days of navigation). I suppose these days the only time we'd use celestial navigation as our primary means of position plotting is if everything else broke down, which is a shame.

This afternoon a fire drill was held. It was very hot to be out on deck in a boiler suit. Various instructions were given by the mates and the foam eductors and branches were tested. An eductor works by using the pressurised water passing through the hose to draw in concentrated foam (think washing up liquid) which mixes together in controlled proportions to produce a spray of foam from the branch (another word for nozzle). We also tested the Breathing Apparatus. The air bottles on board are carbon fibre rather than the normal steel which makes them much lighter. After I put on a set the Bosun asked me to demonstrate that I could get from the aft rope locker back to the aft deck (check the ship's plans on the B.A.S. website if you're interested) wearing the set. I did.

To finish off the drill the four air bottles that had been used needed to be recharged by the compressor we keep in one of the fire lockers. After being shown how this was done I was given the job of recharging the other three. After completing this I cleaned up and returned to the bridge to finish the watch. I completed a metobs report at 1800 and failed dismally to obtain a good star sight. I'm not sure why but I couldn't find any of the stars I needed until the horizon had become to dark to use effectively. All I managed was Jupiter and Arcturus, which were so close together that they will not give much of a position.

The clocks go back again tonight to GMT -1 which means I get an extra 40 minutes in bed and an extra 20 minutes on watch tonight.

A word of explanation

Anyone having difficulty reading the stuff in bold from my last post try reading it out loud and you'll see what I mean.

On another matter I wish to ask a favour of anyone willing to participate. I'm out of the country for some time and so cannot do this myself but could someone please tattoo the words "Must not be allowed to breed" prominently on Mr. Nigel Farage's forehead? Thank you.

Under way again

After a long nights work (by other people of course) we have successfully collected two core samples and are underway to Cape Verde. As there isn't much more to write home about I thought you might be amused by the following notice displayed prominently on the bridge:

ACHTUNG!

Achtung alles Lookenpeepers. Die Machine ist nicht fur gefingerpoken und mittengraben. Ist easy schnappen der Springenwerk, blowenfusen, und poppencorken mit Spitzensparken. Ist nicht fur gewerken by die Dummkopfen. Die rubbernecken Sightseeren bitte heppen Hands in das Pockets, relaxen und watch die Blinkenlighten. Danke.

Here comes the science bit...

Not a lot happened this morning. We sailed along in fair weather for two hours. At 0600 I did my metobs report, noting that we had about one eighth cloud coverage consisting entirely of fair weather cumulus - small fluffy clouds of limited vertical extent at around 300-600m - and proceeded to work out the time of twilight and all the bits and pieces I'd need for a morning star sight. In the fifteen minutes it took me to do that an entire sky worth of altostratus - blanket like cloud at around 1000m - had shot out of nowhere and entirely obscured every single star and planet. Even the sun was obscured when it rose shortly afterwards. Such is life.

This evening was a bit more interesting. At around 1730 we finally arrived at the spot we'd been headed for to take our core samples and switched control to the ship's dynamic positioning console to lower the corer to the sea bed, 5366m down. Whereupon the GPS satellites above us took it upon themselves to line up neatly and in one stroke remove our ability to accurately plot our position with the required reliability. Celestial Navigation is useless in this situation because it will tell you where you were half-an-hour ago to within a couple of miles, whereas dynamic positioning requires the vessel to keep its position accurate to within a few meters for extended periods of time. In the end the satellites cooperated and we were able to land the corer and retrieve it satisfactorily but with all the excitement I didn't get around to doing an evening sight and completely forgot about the metobs report. As it turns out the wet bulb thermometers had all dried up and would have given the wrong readings. I filled them up again last thing this evening. Wet bulbs are used alongside dry bulbs to measure the air temperature and dew point - allowing us to predict the onset of fog. They are contained together in a white box called a Stevenson Screen and normally it would be obvious that they were drying up because you'd have to open the box to read the thermometers but on board this ship they are read by electronic sensor from a black box on the bridge. This means that they have to be topped up regularly without any visual reminder and whoever does this had forgotten to do so recently. I just hope said person isn't me.

I have yet to find out how successful our coring has been.

We saw one vessel during the evening watch today which was visible at 15 miles but came no closer than 13.4. She was some kind of tanker as no cargo could be seen on her decks. Our AIS (Automatic Identification System) has been acting up recently so we couldn't get any more info than that.

A good evening sight

As you may have noticed a lot of my work on board over the past few days has been related to celestial navigation. This is not for the use of the ship, which has more GPS antennas than you can shake a stick at, but for my own benefit. It's a small requirement of my training that I can obtain the ship's position by celestial nav and it's very good that I'm getting the opportunity to practice.

There was no traffic again so the only real incidents of note were metobs and an evening star sight.

Just like a morning star sight twilight has to be calculated in advance and stars chosen which will be suitable. As twilight can be very short at lower latitudes even expected altitudes have to be worked out in advance. Stars must be 'taken' as soon as they become visible because it doesn't take long before the horizon is too dark to make out effectively. Often a star may not be visible to the naked eye at the time and can only be seen through the sextant or binoculars, which can make them very hard to find without precalculating their expected positions.

With any star sight you always measure the eastern stars first - in the morning this is because they will be the first to be drowned out by the increasing light and in the evening because the eastern horizon darkens first. In the morning you want to take the dimmest stars first before they are lost but in the evening you must take the brightest stars first, for obvious reasons. As always this has to be planned in advance else precious time will be wasted. This involves making a sketch of the bearings and brightnesses of each star to be measured so that you already know roughly where to look and when. It is also possible that some other unplanned object will be apparent and if things are going well they are often worth taking too. For example in this evenings sight Jupiter was clearly visible so it was included. As the Rapid Sight Reduction Tables require only latitude and the LHA of Aries they are good for any day of the year, but they do not include planets as these would change on an almost daily basis.

At 35 North with a civil twilight around 19:32 GMT (for which the LHA of Aries was just under 284) the suggested stars were given as Deneb, Altair, Nunki, Antares, Arcturus, Alkaid and Kochab. Of these Nunki and Kochab are dimmest but Nunki was behind a cloud and Kochab was the most westerly and so was taken last. Jupiter was also visible close to Antares (indeed I nearly mistook it for Antares at first) so sights were taken of Altair, Jupiter, Antares, Arcturus, Alkaid and Kochab - in that order. Good results were obtained for all but Altair and Kochab which were about four miles out each, everything else was less than two. This gave an obtained position around one mile from the GPS position so I was very happy. One mile might seem a lot to some but in the middle of the ocean it is very little - minimum safe passing distance between vessels is a mile.

All in all a good evening.

Getting Tropical

We are now at a latitude similar to that of Gibraltar and when I got to the bridge this morning the weather is beginning to reflect this. The horizon was marked with towering cumulonimbus clouds lit by a smattering of stars and a waning gibbous moon against an almost totally black sky. Venus was visible in the east and even though it was behind a cloud it still shone brighter than Sirius, which wasn't. Venus is currently about as bright as it will get. I got a good compass error from it which showed the compasses are still reading about 1 low. This is perfectly normal and nothing to worry about.

The weather is again much improved and the vessel is now rolling only very gently with a pleasant breeze on the starboard quarter. Despite this we were still being set to starboard, prompting me to look up the currents in the area that might be responsible. The most obvious westerly current in this part of the world is the Northern Equatorial current but we're still a little too far north for that to be present. A little research under the chart table lamp suggested that we might be experiencing westerly effects of the Portugal current, which along with the Canary current, runs south west before joining the Northern Equatorial current somewhere in the region of Cape Verde. As it turns out it probably wasn't because shortly after setting the course a little to port to compensate whatever was setting us to starboard disappeared or was cancelled by something else. It may have been a local upwelling of water which gives dynamic positioning systems so much trouble at times.

Once again a metobs was completed for 0600 when it was too dark to get a good look at the waves.

As it looked to be a clear sky we decided to take a morning star sight. I looked up the Nautical Almanac and worked out civil twilight to be at around 0647. Having calculated Local Hour Angle of the First Point of Aeries for that time I had all the required information to consult the Air Rapid Sight Reduction Tables. This is a publication originally for airborne navigators but the Merchant Navy has also adopted it for their own purposes due to its all around usefulness. It gave me seven bright stars that would be visible to me at twilight to take a morning sight: Regulus, Procyon, Sirius, Rigel, Aldebaran, Mirtak and Dubhe. At the time of twilight the last three were hidden behind a rather large cloud over almost our entire north-western sky but I was able to take a sight of the other four and of Venus. This meant that all my sights were a bit close together but given that it was only a practice run this wasn't a problem.

The great advantage of star sights is that they give a position straight away - as opposed to a sun sight which requires you to wait several hours before being able to take a sight at a different crossed bearing. The difficulty is that they have to be taken in a very short span of time when the stars are visible, but so is the horizon. This is why we use civil twilight. Before is too dark to see the horizon, after is too bright to see the stars.

After a long day yesterday I'm taking the rest of the morning a little easier and writing this instead of taking a morning sun sight.

There was no traffic this morning.

A long day

2nd October 2007 PM
Back on the bridge at 11:45 to start the noon metobs which went fairly smoothly as it was daylight, unusual for my normal metobs times. It's a lot easier to gauge things like wind and waves when you can see them.

As it turns out the meridian passage of the sun was at 12:57 so we'd gone a little faster than I anticipated in my morning estimate and got slightly further west. I was on the bridge wing with a sextant when right at the critical moment the sun went behind a cloud! I still got some kind of reading but it wasn't as accurate as I'd have liked. When a cloud obscures the sun you no longer see a distinct outline. The idea with a sextant reading of the sun is to line the lower limb (read bottom edge) of the sun with the horizon but when you can't see that edge you have to go with the middle, brightest, part which involves a lot more guesswork. As soon as I'd taken the sight and recorded the relevant data I headed straight for my cabin and got my head down for a bit.

Once again the evening watch started at 1600. There was a marked improvement in the weather and the roll had drastically reduced.

Every person on board the ship has to complete some kind of safety induction and this afternoon the ship's doctor was on the bridge to finish of hers and the Chief Mate asked me to show her the ship's EPIRBs and the SOLAS training manual. An EPIRB is an emergency position indicating radio beacon and there are three on board the ship: one on the monkey island (above the bridge) and the other two are kept one next to each lifeboat. The SOLAS training manual is kept on the bridge amongst other places and contains instructions and information for the ships life saving apparatus (or LSA) such as lifejackets, immersion suits, breathing apparatus, etc.

After completing the 1800 metobs for the day Robert introduced me to the ship's file of Bills of Lading. These are documents which list the information about each item of cargo we carry. In any commercial situation these Bills of Lading would be documents of title, allowing the bearer to claim the goods as their own - but not in our case as BAS is not a commercial company. Our Bills of Lading seem a little more like non-negotiable waybills. Sometime soon we have to use these documents to compile a tally sheet for all of the cargo we will be discharging at all our various destinations.

Towards the end of the watch we actually saw another ship. They tried to hail us in Spanish which didn't really achieve much. The lookout for the next watch speaks Spanish and when he came up to relieve our lookout the boat was still close. It turns out he was a fishing vessel laying out long lines and wanted us to stay clear of him. Oh well. In the end we passed clear enough to keep him satisfied (about 2 miles).

The last item for the day was to give the handover to the third mate. This involves giving him the information he needs to take over the watch. It involves the ship's course, any navigational hazards in the area, local traffic, items relating to the passage plan, engine information and any items which might be useful such as any equipment failures he should be aware of. That done I was very glad to finish for the day. Short of a couple of hours rest in the afternoon I had been working since 03:40 that morning and needed some sleep.

Taking a morning sight

My watch started 20 minutes early (or 40 minutes late depending on how you look at it) due to the clocks changing. It was getting light at half six though which is a nice change. We're also leaving the low pressure behind which means it was sunny enough to take a few attempts at a sun sight this morning. I have an intercept of 3 and a half miles to work with if it's not too cloudy at noon, which will be around 12:54 at our present position, course and speed. Here's hoping it isn't cloudy else all my efforts will have achieved is that I know the gyro compass is reading about 1 degree low - useful enough in itself but much easier to find out by quicker means. At least I quite enjoy using a sextant as it's something I always wanted to know how to do.

The downside to leaving the low behind is it's now abaft the starboard beam, rather than on the starboard bow. The upshot of this is that rather than the swell causing us to pitch about it's now giving us a wicked roll as JCR is quite a stiff ship. The period of roll is about 10s and quite deep so I'm having to put my laptop in a drawer whenever I'm not using it lest it be thrown across my cabin.

Once again completed a metobs at 0600 GMT. Whilst I was taking my sunsights, which was during the third mate's watch, I spotted a flying fish. This is good in itself but as I'm the one who saw it I've been roped into doing the 1200 metobs so I can report it. I'll be needing a nap this afternoon.

30th September 2007
BST (GMT +1)
On 4-8 watch with C/O. Maintain safe navigational watch under supervision of C/O. C/O recommends I keep this diary to aid me in my oral examinations.

AM
At quarter to four head up to the bridge to let my eyes adjust and get a bearing on things. Take the 0400 position whilst the second mate is writting the log and put it on the chart. Very little traffic in the area. Although dark distinctive splashes observed on the port bow which turn out to be some dolphins. Depth of water increasing from 100 to 4000 metres so navigational echo sounders and scientific echo sounder adjusted as necessary to new depths as shown by the chief mate, Robert Patterson. Maintain navigational watch under supervision of C/O. Overcast sky so no morning compass error taken. At seven o'clock Turbowin used to make 0600 metobs - dolphins reported.

PM
Vessel pitching moderately to moderate swell as is normal for the Bay of Biscay at this time of year. Mostly cloudy but sun briefly seen and an azimuth taken to calculate compass error. Accuracy of results questionable due to constant pitching. Adjust speed due to difficulties with number 4 engine. Settle on higher power on two large engines. At 1900 make metobs. Around 1945 adjust to stbd to pass clear of small fishing vessel at just over 1nm.

Monday, 1st October 2007
BST
On 4-8 watch with C/O. Maintain safe navigational watch under supervision of C/O.

AM
No traffic detected during watch although some odd straight lines appeared which may well have been low flying aircraft. Nothing vissually detected. Pretty heavy swell caused constant pitching and shipping of heavy spray. The sky remained overcast with no opportunity for an azimuth or sight. Although the clouds were clearing by the end of the watch (blue sky with 50% cumulus coverage) the only visible body was the moon which was almost directly overhead and so unsuitable for a reading. At 0700 completed metobs - once again I underestimated the height of the waves. ETA for Madeira is now later than it was this time yesterday but the worst of the low pressure system seems to have passed us by the end of the watch. Shipping forecast mentions that it is now in the west of the English Channel so I guess it must have.

PM
We have another low in relatively the same place as the last one so we're still pitching about quite a bit and giving the brdige windows the occasional dowsing spray of sea water. The watch started this evening with a security drill, which, being the first one for this voyage, was merely an instruction session in the Officer's/Scientist's lounge. Many smirks were given to the security officer's reasons for the ISPS code. The weather was once again overcast but with plenty of rain as we seem to be in the warm sector of the latest depression. It's more deepening than moving anywhere so we'll have to wait till we've passed out the other side before hoping to see an improvement in the weather. I once again completed a metobs report. I may be getting the hang of guaging wave height but there's still some way to go. No traffic this evening. I occupied my time keeping the radar tuned to allow me to spot any vessels that may appear but still trying to keep an eye on the weather. The clocks go back to GMT tonight which means an extra 40 minutes in bed and an extra 20 minutes on watch in the morning.

The Turbowin program mentioned in Sunday's diary is a dutch program, free to download the last time I checked, used to make meteorological reports.

James Clark Ross

I'm now sailing on the James Clark Ross and the Chief Mate has encouraged me to keep a diary of my work for the purposes of aiding me in my MCA examinations. I figured that doing so would be a good way to get back into writing this blog.

The story so far: I joined JCR (as she shall henceforth be known) on September 19th in Immingham where we spent just over a week loading cargo before setting sail for Falmouth to drop a few people off and pick up one or two last bits and pieces. I was on daywork loading the cargo where I mostly understudied whichever officer was supervising the loading of the forward cargo holds. Since setting sail however I have been on the 4-8 watch with the Chief Mate, a former GCNS lecturer by the name of Robert Paterson.

We have just left the bay of Biscay on our way to the Abyssal plain off Madeira to take some core samples before heading to Cape Verde, Africa, to drop some scientists off before heading to Port Stanley, Falklands.

The Metobs reports mentioned below are 6-hourly reports to the UK metoffice detailing aspects of the weather we are experiencing, specifically temperature, pressure, cloud cover, precipitation and the like, as well as anything else of interest we might happen to spot (such as dolphins) for the purpose of building up some picture of what is going on in the troposphere.

The following diary is likely to remain a little dry until I settle into some sort of narrative style but it should give some idea of the sort of things I'm getting up to.

More to follow

Back to sea

I haven't been to sea in over 13 months but by this time tomorrow I'll be away on a ship again! The vessel is called Huelin Dispatch and is by far the smallest ship I'll have sailed on at 80m in length and a cargo capacity of 144 TEU. That's fewer containers than the Arunbank and she wasn't a container ship, which H D is. A photo of her can be found at this page. I'll only be on her for a short while (just over two weeks) as in late September I'll be headed way way down south on the James Clark Ross with the British Antarctic Survey! More on that in later posts.

Huelin Dispatch runs between Portsmouth, Jersey and Guernsey. This means she'll be in mainland Britain three times a week which should be good for my phone bill - no roaming rates.

I suppose the interval since my last post may well have lost me most of my readers. College continued after Christmas until early July and I spent most of it with a new class of final phase cadets, who have all sat their orals by now. It's still some time until I'll be sitting mine. I've pretty much completed my college work now though and I just have a few short courses and my sea time to get - hence short trips like this one.

Exams and such

Well there's been a few things happening since I last posted. The Meteorology exam has been and gone; not only that but it has been marked already! I passed well, but I won't tell you my score. I'm still waiting for the results of a project for chartwork that I handed in nearly two months ago.

The bridge watch exam has also been and gone but that was only two days ago so no results are here as yet. It wasn't a big paper but it was very poorly written with diagrams given which made no sense whatsoever, at least within the context of the question. The diagram for the final question was simply an arrow pointing upwards, but the question itself was about navigating in restricted visibility. I personally don't see the connection.

The chartwork exam is going to be on Monday morning and the construction exam will be the following Friday and they're both going to be big so that should keep me busy for the next week.

Whilst the pace is certainly picking up in classes the attendance is way down with only half to two thirds of the class showing up on any given day which means that some things get repeated. As no one bothers taking a register anymore (hence the poor attendance) none of the lecturers are able to keep track of precisely who has been taught what and they're still soft enough to help people catch up during lecture time if they haven't been around for a couple of weeks. That has got to stop.

Keeping Busy

The pace has actually picked up hear at GCNS. Whilst none of the classes are particularly difficult for anyone who has actually been to sea and had a chance to put the principles into practice I think that many of the first phase cadets (who make the bulk of the class) may be struggling with some concepts such as celestial navigation.

The big time eater at the moment is a presentation I have to give to the class, with a few other people on General Cargo Ships. My five months on the Arunbank have come in handy here, not least because I have plenty of photos. I still have to put some of those online by the way. In fact in an earlier presentation given by one of my colleagues on gas carriers one of my photos from this site was used; I'll let you guess which one.

Also coming up over the next few weeks are lots of exams, the earliest being Meteorology but I also have construction and chartwork looming over the horizon. There was going to be a bridge watch exam but no-one seems to have seen the teacher for some time. She's also the class tutor for the phase one cadets. I'm sure she'll be back soon to test our knowledge of the rules of the road.

Surviving

I'm back from the highlands and feeling rather the worse for wear. It turns out that one of my tent mates had the flu virus and spent the first evening coughing it all over me and Ross, the third member of the tent. We had to walk him back off the mountain to return to Glasgow on the second morning because he was feeling terrible. We finished our own hike last night at a hostel and went to bed feeling fine but very tired and footsore but both woke up this morning feeling miserable. Now I'm back in Glasgow and I'm going to spend the next day or so curled up in bed.

On a different note the method for leaving comments has changed on this page due to the abuse it has received from certain people. Amusingly the colleges content filters allowed them to make the comment (assuming they came from someone in the college) but will not allow me to delete them so I have taken other steps to see to their removal. You should all still be able to leave comments, which I will still receive, but will not necessarily be seen on this page.

Back again

I'm back in College (I have been for a week actually but last week wasn't very interesting and I didn't get around to writing anything.
The big news at the moment is that next week from Monday to Friday the whole class is being dragged away on some kind of Camping Trip / Adventure Week and whilst I don't mean to moan the whole thing sounds like it's going to be dreadful, not to mention the loss of a week of study. I've got nothing against such trips in general, but this one will be up a hill in Scotland (not a bad thing in itself) with very cold weather and no facilities whatsoever. We have to carry all our food for the week in our packs, at least a proportion of the drinking water, a tent and several changes of clothes. Although no one has been very definite on what we'll actually be doing up there and what kind of clothes we'll need. I don't mean to complain but I'm not entirely sure I trust the organisation of this event.

On a happier note College has now progressed to the stage where it will occasionally teach me things I haven't done before through self study or at sea. Today in Celestial Navigation for example we studied calculations for calculating the precise position of the Pole Star (It does move a little, but it's important). It's very easy to do but the important thing is that I'd never done it before. Good Stuff.