Our delayed departure is being prolonged by nasty weather that just won't quit. We had planned to leave on Saturday, May 21st; the ship and crew have been all ready to go since then. However, the forecast showed a gale coming up from Cape Cod and the Captain said that since we are likely to run into some bad weather somewhere along the voyage, there's no point setting out into a big storm especially with a novice crew.
Saturday afternoon the weather took a sudden turn for the worse...we went from sunscreen and t-shirts to sweaters, coats and gloves in less than an hour. By Saturday night it was pouring rain, a cold, hard driving rain, blowing sideways across the ship's deck.
I woke up in the middle of the night Saturday because of strange sounds - water gurgling as if it were running past my side of the ship, as if we were underway...except that we're still tied to the dock. Of course, once I was awake and hearing water sounds I had to get up to use the head...which means going up on deck to the port aft head...which means clothes and rain gear. It takes 15 minutes to put on clothes, get out of my bunk, put on raingear and get to the head. When I opened the door at the top of the companionway it was nearly blown out of my hand. The rain was driving sideways so hard that it came through the breezeway and into the head making the toilet paper slightly damp.
Sunday morning the rain and wind and cold continued with Force 7 winds, gusting even stronger. It turns out that a couple of pilings on our wharf came loose during the night. We had to change some of the dock lines, put out new fenders and re-do chafing gear on the dock lines during the 8-12 watch. It was supremely nasty conditions for working. My fingers were so cold I could barely feel or move them. Nonetheless, I learned the constrictor knot that is used for tying on chafing gear, and I then taught it to two of my watch mates.
After we had made sure the ship was secure, the Chief Mate called us to muster in the warehouse where she gave us a brief weather lesson and explained the forecast for the next 96 hours: this low pressure system will be followed by another low coming from the same direction. Then there's a high pressure system up by the St. Lawrence Gulf that could keep these low pressure systems from moving out. So this "snotty weather" (as Capt. Dan calls it) could stick around as long as 3 or 4 days.
By Sunday evening I was convinced that this is some of the worst weather I've ever seen. Beginning Saturday night we have been keeping night watch on deck and will continue to do so every night as long as this awful weather persists. While I was up on watch it was blowin' stink and driving rain (half an hour earlier it was only blowing, no rain). We have to continually check the chafe gear on the dock lines. We found one line with no chafe gear and I had to go down into the sole of the salon to dig out the chafe gear and robands, then go up on the foredeck (perhaps the windiest place on the ship) and tie on the chafe gear using constrictor knots - something I just learned to do the day before.
Monday morning's weather was not much better, except that the rain had abated.
I made it through morning watch (8am-noon) with moderately numb hands and horribly cold toes and wind blowing through to my bones. For a short time around 10am the "breeze" almost had a hint of warmer air. That quickly changed again - back to cold. On Monday the wind gusts were up to 100 kilometers/hour (about 60-65mph) according to the radio. Even for Nova Scotia this is unusually atypical weather.
During watch we found a few more places where chafe gear needed to be replaced or reinforced. Everything is constantly moving on the ship so it has to be checked and fixed continually. At the moment we have four ships to check on - in addition to the Picton Castle, across the dock from us are two old fishing trawlers (Primo and Zebroid) that Capt. Dan recently purchased to be converted into schooners for passenger and cargo ship runs to Bermuda and the South Pacific; and on the next dock over is the Lady Janet, a huge old derelict Coast Guard shiip that no longer belongs to the Canadian Coast Guard. If Lady Janet's lines give way, she will blow down onto the Picton Castle and do some very serious damage. Her lines look rather dubious and her bow line is tied to a bit that is pulling itself up out of the wharf. Before the storm began to blow really hard some of our more experienced crew went over to add more lines both fore and aft to reduce the risk.
Today (Tuesday) we had more rain, cold and wind this morning. By lunch time the rain had stopped; it's still very blustery. This may be the lull before another, even bigger blow hits us. So, we'll be in port several more days...possibly until Saturday.
Yesterday Captain Moreland told us that the forecast shows two low pressure systems coming together into one much bigger low pressure system with the same technical features of "The Perfect Storm", although not quite as strong. And some of the Lunenburg fishing fleet have come back into port. When Nova Scotia fishermen come in because of a storm you know it's bad! The seas out in the ocean are running 20-25 feet (double those numbers to get the complete distance from the trough to the crest of the waves).
We are in a protected harbor, so it's not quite so rough here. Nonetheless, the ship is moving a lot more at the dock than it had before the storm. And the storm surge has made high tide so high that it's difficult to board the ship - the gang plank to the quarter deck is at least a 60 degree slope from the dock, and the mid-ships rail is just a bit too high to jump over when bundled up with 3 to 7 layers of clothing and foul weather gear.
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