Yesterday the crew warned us of an impending storm. They suggested that if we have Dramamine this might be the night to take it. As we sat down for dinner and looked across the sea which at this point wasn't entirely open (we still had offshore islands protecting the channel we were in), we knew something was brewing as whitecaps and large waves were everywhere. This is not a big ocean liner style ship. We were getting tossed around pretty good and the heart of the storm wasn't even upon us. Sandy pulled out the Dramamine and we each took a couple before our dinner arrived. One of the side affects of Dramamine is that it makes you drowsy. As soon as I got to the cabin I fell to sleep on the couch. For me that was the end of the story; sometime in the night, I don't remember when or how, I must have moved to the bed. I remember waking up once and noticing the rocking of the boat and thinking how nice it is to sleep like that. I seldom sleep more than five hours a night, but with the Dramamine I slept eleven hours. That felt like a good night's sleep, but I also did not remember much of a storm and figured we must have missed the really rough seas. That is until I walked into the living area of our cabin. All the things that were on the shelves and cabinet tops were now on the floor including some of the Scotch that I had brought from Orkney. Sandy, on the other hand, did wake up to appreciate the storm and remembered it quite well. Today has been a bright sunny day, calm seas, and for being in the Arctic, pretty warm.
Because of the storm, and a cargo hatch that had to be repaired, we were late getting into Hammerfest. The Captain had cargo to deliver further down the line so he made the decision to cut short the time we were in port. Sandy and I did get a chance to walk to "The Meridian Column in Hammerfest" that marks the northern end of a contiguous and unbroken set of geometric triangulations stretching through Norway, Sweden, and Russia to the mouth of the Danube in an effort to measure the size of the planet in 1857, or so says His Majesty Oscar I, and Emperors Alexander I and Nicholas I, as subscribed on the marker. One way or the other they got it right as later determined by satellite measurements.
Hammerfest is the center of the liquified gas export industry in Norway. Natural gas is piped into Hammerfest from the North Sea Fields. Here it is cooled to minus 260°F. At that temperature it is a liquid that is 600 times more compact than the gas. The liquid gas LNG is pumped aboard specially designed freighters and sent to Spain and the United States.
The rest of the day was spent just watching the never-ending jaw dropping landscape to slowly pass by.
The meals on the boat have been quite good, but as a part of our room package, we were invited to their 5-course "fancy" dinner. Good food. good wine, good company, along the northern coast of Norway. I think this is all perfect.
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