Underway to Belfast
Time: 2305
Lat: N 49 56.4’
Long: W003 32.9’
Good Evening,
We gained an hour last night to sync up with Belfast, Ireland. Capt. MacArthur changed our course to go down through the English Channel and then up to Ireland rather than the planned route up and over Scotland. We left Kiel a couple of hours late, waiting on the installation of some emergency communication equipment. Time factors and some weather concerns pushed our arrival date to Belfast a day later. We will still spend four days in Belfast and arrive in Castine on the 19-20th as projected. We are on Day 56, leaving only eighteen days left! I have learned a lot and am so happy to have had the experience, but with the arrival date coming up, I have been looking forward to being home.
In training, we did some charting practice with Capt. Slazas. We were given (lat/longs) and used tools to plot the waypoints on the chart. Then using two bearings taken from a vessel, we triangulated our position. Then later that evening, I saw a junior friend on her way up to the Cadet Nav. Lab to work on plotting for her project. So, I poured some hot chocolate and went up to help. I plotted a waypoint after seeing the process the juniors take, which is understandably more involved. Next semester I start taking navigation courses where I will do plenty of chart work.
Yesterday, I wandered into a group of juniors untangling a line for a kite. After about an hour of untangling, they got it flying.
Stay tuned as we make our way to Belfast,
Odegaard Fields
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