Day 14

16 September, 2003

A night full of dreams and that extra little push to make breakfast an hour earlier. After breakfast (cheese omelet) with a particularly quiet and sullen Christiaan, the ship stops her engine and a ten minute glide to a stop in the Eight Degree Channel (or locally known as Maliku Kandu) between the island of Minicoy and the Maldives, maybe two hundred miles off of the pirate ridden Malabar coast. Large puffy clouds here and there, but basically a bright and hot sunshine. The top mast is getting chipped and primed.

We sit in the Indian Ocean for eight hours. The big bowl. The occasional ship, usually another containership or a car carrier, slips over the edge of their bowl and into ours!

The ship starts imperceptibly. First a giant electric motor turns the crankshaft, still connected to the propeller, so as the number one piston is at the top of it’s run. Then a blast of compressed air pushes it down starting the engine. It takes almost a half an hour to get back to full speed of around one hundred rpm. Meanwhile, a tropical rainstorm comes whipping across the ocean and joyously drenches us in soft warm water, but only for ten minutes. I think all our many feathery stowaways are thrilled to bits as they have pools of fresh water about. It is also perfect timing as to cleaning off all the chipped metal that has come down today from the mast, let alone a few days of exhaust cinder output.

The moon is rising around 2300, so the early evening is too dark to wander around my private playground. I go up to the bridge via the internal staircase. It is soooooo dark. Thank god for radar. On to the Bay of Bengal, the Straits of Mallacca and Singapore!

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