A rough night, busy day.

We spent all day yesterday shovelling snow off the deck in freezing rain. The waves were a good 4-4.5 meters but since they were coming from dead astern, it did not feel too bad. Last night though, we changed course near Cape Canso (close to good old Port Hawkesbury!), where mainland Nova Scotia meets Cape Breton and started taking the waves off our stern quarter. That was when the rolling started, and it only got worse. It's pretty hard to get a good nights sleep when the ship rolls like that. Even for the long time career sailors. I managed a few hours in and I think I was one of the lucky ones. We woke up to a deck covered in frozen ocean spray, so chipping and shovelling the ice overboard was most of the day's work, aside from taking a steam hose to melt some frozen valves earlier. It is pretty cool, working on a rolling deck with huge waves all around you and spray flying in your face. Makes a menial job like shovelling a little more enjoyable.  We are only going about half speed right now. We don't have a spot at the Irving refinery to refill with cargo until Saturday so we are proceding at economical speed to an anchorage close by. The wind is strong from dead ahead now. The bow is going to get iced up nicely...more work for us tomorrow. Makes the day go by fast though! And you work up a sweat, even though it is well below zero before the wind chill.