travel - Sleepypete's Pillow

Hello everyone,

Am on a boat. Is a good boat :

Picture. Photograph. We're looking at the front end (bow) of a small cruise ship from the left (port) side. We're taking the picture from a tarmac covered area of dockside. The ship is tied up by ropes. The name "MAUD" is on the front. The ship is black at the bottom, with a red band, with the pointy end and upper decks being a mix of white structure and glass.

This is going to be a fast post because I’m needing to put my boots on again in about 25 minutes from this bit in the post to learn about more stuff, let’s see how far we can get !

The ship started off on a sunny day (calm before the storm) in Tilbury Docks on the Thames to the East of London. It was a decent trip down there and I got to the ship in plenty of time. Embarkation was pretty smooth. If you can see a door in the side of the ship there, that’s where passengers get on. There’s another bigger door a bit further down where they restock the ship and bring the luggage on. It’s very efficient.

About MAUD … she takes about 250 of us passengers and we’re headed up the Norway coast now in search of the Northern Lights. I’m hoping to have a technique laid down to let me quickly get to the upper deck with a tripod to hopefully let me get some pictures for you. But I do have a bit more research to do there. (Plus hopefully clear skies to test with !)

Picture. Photograph. We're looking out of the ship to starboard (right), we can just see a bit of the ship to our left. We're looking out over a fairly calm sea, with the sun up in a blue sky dotted with a small selection of clouds. On the water, is a ship with an open deck and a wheelhouse at the back. The sun is reflecting off the water through the other ship.

That’s not Maud :-D. That was a tanker that was following us away. Maud is a very nicely set up little ship. Us passengers see up the ship starting from Deck 4, where we get on board. Deck 5 has the 3 restaurants, including one where I’ve been vastly enjoying the milkshakes.

We're looking at a milkshake in a tall glass, sitting on a glass topped table with a hatch pattern of wood beneath. The milkshake is mostly white, with dark chocolate bands going across and down. It has a pyramid top of cream. — Yep. Delicious

Deck 5 also has a lecture where we’ve been learning about Norway and a few preparations for what we’ll see, plus a few very welcome tips on how to get the best out of it and to capture it for later memories.

I have lots to learn about the photography but hopefully I’ll pick up the tips and absorb them in time to adopt them into a technique my body can handle. Like how to get really cunning angles for shots, involving getting down really low … with the challenging aspect of that being getting up again :-D. Good job I have a tripod now.

Deck 6 has guest accommodation, plus an outside area where we can walk around the entire ship. Deck 7 is all cabins. Deck 8 is where everyone can get together for presentations. Finally Deck 9 has another outside area where I’ll be taking more pictures from.

And we have a wonderful crew of the ship with a fun bunch of Expedition people who have been getting us up to speed with their specialist subjects. I’ve enjoyed (most*) of my time so far, looking forwards to hopefully seeing lights in the sky later, plus more great stuff along the way.

Picture. Photograph. We're looking at a really calm area of water bounded on left, far and right by the harbour dock side. A number of ships are lined up alongside each part of the dock. Low buildings can be seen in the distance, plus 2 dockside cranes, 2 building cranes and a small lighthouse to the left. The sky is mostly clouded.

That’s us coming into the small Scheveningen port for a technical stop before heading across the North Sea. It’s in the Netherlands, quite close to the Hague. Our ship can get in there by virtue of having a pair of Azipods and several bow thrusters. The Azipods are clever devices where the propeller isn’t on a long shaft, it’s in a module that sticks out under the ship and can fully rotate. It allows for incredible manoeuvrability and the ability for Maud to get in and out of places like this.

The “most*” above is for what came after Scheveningen … The UK has been hit by another Winter storm … and we got the edge of it. It got a bit wild out there … enough that the outside area was closed off and a lot of the passengers retreated to our cabins and bunks as we crossed the North Sea to the Norway coast.

But we got through that and Bergen was spectacularly lovely today. That’s for another post though, I gotta start getting those boots on again so I can hear about what’s happening tomorrow :-D.

Picture. Photograph. We're looking at dark open sea in the lower half, with dense cloud above. There is just enough cloud opening in the centre for us to see a flat band of fire, with a couple of rectangular shapes of fire above and near the middle.

Time for one last one before I disappear. This was sunrise on Sunday morning. It was mostly cloud again but there were a few gaps which allowed for spectacular shapes like the Ship On Fire above.

Later everyone ! Have a great week, I’ll be back at some point with more pictures. One last thing, if you’re thinking you need to disappear from the world for a while, I’ve only been on the Hurtigruten ship for 4 days now and I would HEAVILY recommend them.

Hello everyone,

What’s this ? 2 in a week ? Better watch that, could be habit forming 😀

Picture. First caption is "5 year old me when it's cold outside." We see two cats side by side. One has its mouth closed, one has its mouth wide open with a cloud coming out. Second caption is "30 year old me when it's cold outside". Same picture — I’m in this picture and I like it

I’m feeling glad that I looked at the departure date again … I’d convinced myself that it was Sunday for some reason, might have ended up arriving only to be told the boat had sailed the day before. That would have been a bit tragic !

I’ve actually been a little more organised too. My latest car got delivered to its first owner in Dec 2018, which means it’s due for the annual service and MoT roadworthiness check. Sorted for the Monday after I get back.

Time for a momentary rollback to last post though, I think I got a little emotional there. Which is ok, because I take that as a sign that I’m caring about the other people in the world. One extra comment for last post would be that we need to read the room when we’re doing the nice things. Something we perceive as nice might not be the right thing to do or say. Like our lovely streamer lady having to repeatedly remind chat that she didn’t want to have comments about what she looked like, because the stream chat kept going back to that subject.

So – be kind to others but read the room before that comment pops out of your head. I naturally have a thought about what the people that I see I are like. But I’m not going to let that opinion out of my head unless I know how it will be received. And that’s not just by the person the comment it’s about, it’s about everyone else around them too.

Picture. Meme. We're looking at a tiny penguin, determinedly heading off to the right. On the left, a raised foot. In the centre, the Penguin has a wing raised as if leading a person by their hand. The caption "Come wiht me, Human. I'll show you how to penguin."

Quite. I’ve been thinking about cold, with a few looks ahead at the weather for a couple of the places I’m going. One of them has a minus 9 degrees C day before the temperature pops up a little bit there. I’m actually ok with that, I’d rather be in extra layers in the cold than struggling desperately to stay cool when it’s too hot outside.

But … if you haven’t experienced that level of cold, or know what to expect, it’s very dangerous in its own way. Having suitable gear is really important. Being aware of the conditions and what they’ll do is absolutely critical. Hypothermia will kick in … and you won’t notice. Mind you, heat is similar … both extremes of temperature will mess up your thinking and stop you extracting from the situation before it becomes dangerous.

If you’re heading into cold conditions, I’d very much recommend taking a course or watching videos about what to expect. However, it’ll likely go into things like frostbite injuries which can get graphic. Still, it’s good to have a little bit of scare in you when going into situations, it means you’re taking them seriously.

A little bit of fear can be a good thing.

So lessons from a few years ago ?

Great socks are really helpful. I had cheap but decent fuzzy boots too. They took about 5 minutes to get them on in the mornings but when the feet were in them, they were super comfy. I could easily drive the 4×4 in them too (I can technically drive in safety boots but it’s not … safe). They kept my feet warm and kept me upright too.

Good gear counts, the boots that the other guys had were standard issue boots and they were having to monitor their time outside and come in when they were starting to feel the cold in their toes. (That said, I was doing very similar things, I’m chubby but not that well extra insulated).

Did I mention that we had a minus 16 degrees C day when we were out there ? Yep. Brr.

It also affects equipment. Funny things happen around the freezing point of water. If you have an air pump, like for car tyres, then if isn’t working off dry air it’s likely to fail due to freezing droplets. The water droplets will go around the system until they hit a valve, then contact with the cold parts will make the droplet freeze, it blocks the valve and pump no work. Similar for cable and pipe joins. Contraction and expansion will loosen connections and make pipes pop off.

And that’s the stuff we don’t often think about. We actually had a good time out there, early teething troubles with getting up to speed with the cold were quickly sorted out and we could get on with rattling through the programme of work we had. Lots done, much data acquired, good times. And that’s about all I can talk about the work :-D.

More stuff :

Windchill is nasty. It makes even a mild minus 5 feel at least 10 degrees colder. A good scarf to cover up exposed skin is a very handy thing. I ditched the thermal lined hat I bought early on (still got it, just don’t use it) in favour of the bright yellow Atomic Hat. It’s a thermal lined beanie which I can’t wear too much because anything above freezing and it’s too toasty. Good hat.

Everything is more brittle, so keep your footing and don’t slip.

Hands and fingers will numb. Fast. I like my digital camera (Canon Ixus 265) but … while the take photo button is accessible with gloves on, the power button is recessed. It’s not particularly usable even with the light gloves on. So, you need to have exposed skin in order to turn the camera on. (Probably not really a problem, it’ll standby to save power and wake up again when you press button).

My fingers were numbed and losing dexterity in under 10 seconds in the below minus 10 C conditions and didn’t start reactivating until I was inside in the warm again. Cold be dangerous …

Meme picture. We're looking at a white cat with pointy pink ears, standing up and looking at the camera. They're on a chair, with more chairs in the background. The caption is "Do you have treats? Treats are my favourite"

Looking forward to the trip. There are excursions off the ship, which I’ll indulge in as much as my body lets me. (I’m fully expecting to be stiff as a board for a bit and to have the leg cramps continue). But when I get cold, I’ll be able to retreat inside and continue looking at what I’m expecting to be a very pretty world. Maybe even get sketching. We’ll see.

And I’ve been finding it to be a liberating feeling at work to be saying “I’ll be disappearing from the planet for a couple of weeks”. I think I’ve needed to do an escape like this for a long time now, after finding a taste with it with the cold weather trip (just before covid happened) and several other work away trips.

Should be good. And I’m hoping to be paying the snow pictures tax for people too :-D.

Picture. We're looking at the back of a silver white car. The glass at the back has a fairly thin covering of snow but you can see a smiley emote face drawn in it just below the brake lights.

I’ll hopefully get chance to get some posts out in the next couple of weeks. See you around, be good to people, have fun, be well.

Category: travel

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