Almost there!

It has been a pretty good trip to PEI! We are getting close now to Charlottetown. Just on lunch break now. We spent the first day at sea doing mundane cleaning-not too much fun. But the day after was some nice dirty work greasing all the deck winches. I got my shiny new orange coveralls nice and dirty, as they should be. Coming from sailing in the lakes, I have to say it feels weird to have barely any wind, yet still feel the ship rolling in fairly large (1.5-3 meter) swell. I guess the water in the open ocean never stops moving. We also spent some time replacing steam pipes which had corroded through and were leaking. We use steam during deep freezes  to thaw valves which get frozen shut. as Myles the bosun said, "we don't use it every day, but without it we'd be f****d". Later on that day, we ran into some heavy fog. It just appeared out of nowhere and more or less stayed until this morning. The fog horns were going strong, and they are very loud and piercing. This morning, however, we had to remove the one on the bow. It had frozen and the piston inside had basically bashed itself to pieces. I volunteered to go up the forward mast (a 20 foot high post with a ladder and platform), but they said that you need a permit to do work aloft, even with a harness. Regulations are everywhere.

The trip this morning has been very very cool. It was beautiful when the fog lifted and you could see dark sky contrasted with the sun shining through, ice on the water, and land on both sides (PEI and Nova Scotia).  We are currently  steaming through some pretty heavy ice and are following a coast guard ice breaker which is about 1.5 nautical miles (close to 3km) ahead. You still feel the ship shudder though as it pushes past the large, broken chunks of sea ice. There are also seals everywhere on ice flows. I have probably seen about 15 without even looking for them. When travelling through ice, the ship's autopilot has to be turned off and she has to be steered with a helmsman. I took a turn at the wheel too relieve the one who was on this morning so he could have his half hour break. It is the most fun I've had steering so far! You just need to follow the track of the ice breaker and more or less keep our ship's foremast lined up with the stern of the other vessel. The track is quite narrow and on very small turns of the wheel are required to correct the course. 2-3 degrees of rudder angle is enough. Then you watch the foremast on the horizon, and when it starts to swing in the direction you want, you bring the rudder back amidships (to the center), or give a little correction in the other direction as needed to keep on course. A few times, some larger turns were required to avoid the seals, who seem happy to bask in the sun right where we are trying to go. I guess they are unphased by  two large and fast moving ships headed straight towards them.

Hopefully, we will be all tied up in Charlottetown in a few hours. The mooring lines are all ready to go and all we need to do now to get ready is attach two cargo hoses to our tanks. Then we will be all set.