500 Shades of Grey- Skies and Water!

---

Dateline: The Bearing Sea, 500 Shades of Grey…



We left Dutch Harbor and headed into the grey fog of the Bearing Sea. Small (by comparison to our ship) fishing boats, tankers and tugs we alongside us for a ways. The skies were hundreds of shades of grey and the waters hundreds more. 500 shades of greys would change from light to dark, from misty to opaque. The seas, as they rolled beneath us reflected the sky’s greys and took on their own dark and shadowy greys from below. Grey everywhere… hard to tell the sky from the horizon from the sea. We are heading west toward Figure 1 Entering Fog Bank Dutch Harbor



Russia and the Kamchatka Peninsula. Later we will turn south and set course for Amerika Pass and our destination, Kushiro.



Even with all the grey, the sea is pretty calm, in contrast to what you hear about the dramatic weather in the Bering Sea.



We have turned our clocks back 3 times so far. Once before Kodiak for an hour, then two nights ago, a 2 hour set back and last night another 2 hour set back. As those of you who have sailed or flown know, your internal circadian clock starts to go nutty ;-) We are now 5 hours ahead of ourselves and tonight we cross the International Dateline and will skip Monday the 29^th of September entirely. Cope is wondering where, in cyberspace, his Monday Night Football game is ;-). But, he was able to watch the Cowboys game on Sunday, and since they won, he was happy!!!



We will be in the Bering Sea for a few days. As it turns out there are storms brewing to the south of the Aleutians and they will be hitting the islands soon. So the Captain is changing course to the north and heading on a westerly course directly towards Russia that will keep us away from the storms. The seas are still churning but we are out of the worst of it.



The Captain on this ship, the MS Amsterdam, doesn’t talk to us very much. On some of the ships, the Captain will tell you when there are interesting things to see or why we are changing course, but not on this one. Captain Everson… only comes on at 1pm every day to tell us our position, depth of water, etc. The other day, as we were between Kodiak Island and Dutch Harbor we happened to be sitting on the Lido Deck when someone started pointing. So of course we needed to find out what was going on and lo and behold we were in the middle of a pod of about 100 whales. It was awesome!! We could see their spouts and their backs coming out of the water and occasionally the fluking of a tale. It was unbelievable. We certainly wished that those on watch or the Captain had announced it so that more people could have seen them. Ah well, every ship is different.



We have found a great place to write to you… it is the Ocean Bar on deck 5. Big windows to watch the grey changing…oh gosh… there are birds outside heading somewhere. We haven’t seen many birds on this trip. We’re also seeing a little blue sky and clouds of various shades of grey. Whoops, spoke too soon, clouds gone, blue sky gone. Grey.



We have 4 sea days to get to Kushiro, Japan. Yesterday, Cope went to a Japanese language class, so with his 10 words of Japanese he will be my tour guide ;-) We also heard a fascinating lecture about the history of opening up the Northwest Passage and hit the library. We have both read



5-6 books just since we have been on the ship;-)



We heard today that there are protests going on in Hong Kong. We are 23 days away from getting off in Hong Kong so will keep an eye on the situation. Shouldn’t affect us.



Today we are continuing west toward the Kamchatka Peninsula and will cut through the Aleutians around Attu Island and Stalemate Pass. We understand the seas will be rough once again when we are back in the North Pacific.



A couple of nights ago we were told by the Captain to put everything away as we were going to have high seas. Was he ever right! 67 knot winds hitting us broadside for almost 2 days. At one point they hit 75 knots. We still maintained 17 knots and hour. As for me, I took 1 Dramamine and went into hibernation mode. Spent a lot of time sleeping. We are on the lowest passenger deck so the least motion…at one point Cope was up in the Crows Nest (the higher you are the more the motion) He had dishes crashing around him. These are well seasoned travelers on this ship……… nobody blinked an eye ;-) Waves and wind lessened yesterday and we were able to have the “Black and Silver Gala”. Everyone wears black and silver, including the servers and all the decorations around the ship are black and silver. ;-) One of the Medical Officers joined us at our table so we had free wine ;-) Also Roz, our tablemate had her 74th birthday so we shared a chocolate birthday cake.



This morning has dawned another grey and rainy day as we enter the harbor in Kushiro, Japan. The ship came into the harbor, and then the tugs turned us 180 degrees, backing us up to the dock.



At 9am the customs agents will be on board and each of us will be given our passports. Up until now the ships crew has been holding them. When our number is called (we’re number 8 out of about 50) we will proceed to our dining room to show our passports to the immigration officers and have our temperature taken before we will be allowed to leave the ship. We have a tour out to the Kushiro Marshlands at 11 to see the cranes that have come back from near extinction. We’ll tell you all about it in the next blog… gotta head to immigration.



Sayonara ;-)

---

Comments

[Rafael]

Dutch Harbor
Did you guys see any of the "Deadliest Catch" crew with their all their pots full of crabs?

[Adventureduo]

Deadliest Catch Crew
Alas Rafael, the season is just starting and the crews are heading to Dutch Harbor... not there yet. However, we did see their thousands of crab baskets all ready to go on the shore.