Tag Archives: surtsey

Monday 15th July 2019 – YET ANOTHER …

… really depressing night last night. We hit a few strong waves round about 04:00 and that awoke me. I couldn’t go back to sleep and so ended up making a visit down the corridor for the usual reasons. I must stop drinking tea late at night.

But after that, I managed to go back to bed and to sleep, only to wake up 90 minutes later.

Despite the early awakening it was still a struggle to leave my stinking pit and I only just managed to beat the third alarm call.

Upstairs on deck it was cold and windy, and really foggy too. We had somehow managed to negotiate the entrance to the harbour at Heimaey here on Vestmannaeyar without having to turn round at the harbour mouth and reverse in as we did last time. Instead, we turned round inside the harbour.

After breakfast I had a little relax and then took Rosemary to visit the old buildings down by the lava flow. She had missed them last time.

Later on, while Rosemary went for a walk to the museum, I went for a really good stroll around the town and right around the other side of the harbour and the fishing docks. And if you think that I smell bad, you should smell the air when you have a fish-processing plant on one side of you and a colony of seabirds on the other.

One of the things that I did was to make some kind of story of photographs involving a returning trawler, a couple of fork-lift trucks stacking boxes full of fish, another fork-lift truck loading them into a shipping container, a huge lifting truck loading the container onto,the back of a lorry and finally the lorry disappearing into what passes for the sunset around here.

There is a ship repair yard here too and it makes the one in Granville pale into insignificance. They have a kind of internal railway system to move the ships around from the slipway and although it wasn’t being used it was still something interesting.

But I was surprised to learn that one of the largest customers for Icelandic fish is Nigeria. I wasn’t expecting that at all.

Back on board ship I started to edit the outstanding pile of photographs but didn’t get very far because it was time for lunch. And time for an argument too (it didn’t take long, did it?) when someone asked me if I would be reaping the benefits of Brexit.

This afternoon I had another good crack at the photos and managed to edit quite a few dozen, although I was interrupted by going to crash out for a good 90 minutes during the afternoon. I’ve not been having such a good day.

But I’m impressed with some of the photos that I have taken. editing them, cropping and enlarging them has produced a good few that are quite spectacular. Investing in this camera was a very good decision.

Bad news though in that we aren’t going to go near to Surtsey to have a close look at the island. The sea is too rough and the weather is too bad for us to approach it with anything like the proximity that we need to have a good look.

After tea we had a singles party but there were only a few of us there. The weather has really got up now and the waves are not to everyone’s liking. But there was one person too many – a young guy who had been everywhere and done everything, a German who blamed the French for all of Germany’s problems.

I really don’t know where they dig up these people.

The evening soon came to a close as people disappeared quite quickly. I stayed up to do a little work and to organise myself better. We gain an hour tomorrow so we aren’t in too much of a rush to go to bed.

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Saturday 13th July 2019 – HAVING HAD …

… yet another reasonable sleep with only a moderate amount of disturbance, I was ready for the alarm when it went off. And ready for the second one too. I did however manage to beat the third alarm.

For a change just recently, I remembered my medication too, so properly provided, I staggered up on deck to see what I could see. And the answer to that conundrum was “nothing at all” because there was more of this thick, clammy fog everywhere.

After breakfast, things changed slightly. We had a briefing or two but I drifted away after a while because I could see in the distance the mast of a boat. This was the pilot boat pulling up alongside and that told me that we must be close to land.

Accordingly, I went up on deck. And I’m glad that I did (and consequently missed the group photograph) because the manoeuvre to get into the harbour here at Heimaey in the Vestmannaeyar Islands is quite interesting. There was a volcanic eruption here in 1973 and a flow of lava spread down from the Eldfell mountain, engulfing half of the houses and flooded into the harbour entrance, almost closing it off.

As a result, the harbour mouth that used to be about 800 metres wide is now about 150 metres. The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour had to perform a series of spectacular manoeuvres, including turning around and reversing in. And when you have a 137-metre ship trying to turn round in a 150-metre opening, it’s certainly exciting.

Eventually we found our way in, pursued by a ferry from the mainland, and tied up.

I’d missed the start of lunch, which meant that I had to dash to be ready for our coach trip around the island. Our driver took us to the museum where we could see the history of the eruption as well as a house that had been excavated from the ash, and then off on a sight-seeing expedition.

He took us to a bay where Algerian pirates had landed and carried off half of the population into slavery, and also to the site of what is considered to be the first settlement on the island, dating from the late 9th Century and may even precede the official date of 874 AD that is given for the first Norse colonialisation of Iceland.

But it was very interesting listening to the guide and the driver talking about “Iceland” as if it were somewhere else and a completely different country to their own out here on Vestmannaeyar.

And had I known – but the local football club IBV Vestmannaeyar plays in the Icelandic Premier Division and they were playing “at home” this afternoon about half a mile away from here. I could have made the game had I put my skates on.

Back at the ship, the others wandered off for a zodiac ride. Strawberry Moose and I went for a walk down to the old fort, the old church and the old house to see what was going on. And I’m glad that I did as I only just managed to beat the caretaker locking up the church.

There were kids playing around, and a wedding party there too. All of the passing ships and boats were saluting them.

My trip took me to the local supermarket to compare prices. Seeing as this is an island in the Far North, I found that the prices were not as ridiculously high as I was expecting. In fact, some of the goods were priced quite reasonably when compared to the mainland of Iceland. I still couldn’t afford to live here though.

Back on the ship we had tea, interrupted by passing the island of Surtsey, the new one that sprang up out of the Atlantic 50-odd years ago and which we saw on our way into Iceland.

We all said our goodbyes too because tomorrow will be quite hectic as people leave. And then we had the “talent show”, from which I steered well clear. I’ve seen at first hand the embarrassment that this kind of event may cause.

So now it’s bed-time. And an early start yet again tomorrow. There’s a lot to be done so I hope that I have a good night’s sleep.

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Thursday 4th July 2019 – LAST NIGHT …

… I was in bed early and having watched a film, was soon off to sleep.

And to my surprise I managed to sleep for most of the night too – with a brief awakening round about 04:40.

Plenty of time to go off on a little travel too. I was in Shavington somewhere and we’d had friends staying – American friends. I awoke, and these people were awake too so I asked hem what time it was. They replied that there was 12 minutes to go until the alarm. So when the alarm went off these people got up and got ready. I directed them to go back to Crewe via Chestnut Avenue, that way, so they could see the houses and the town and see how people lived, councillors and so on. But whoever I was with said that councillors don’t live round here. They all live in the big houses on the new estates. We were out after that trying to find something and we wanted a newspaper. We had to work the controls to this machine in a certain way in order to work it, but I couldn’t get it right. The newsagent had some papers on display but it was things like the Daily Sexpress and the Daily Wail, Tory party garbage newspapers or whatever and I had no intention whatever of reading any of them. The rest of this dream has evaporated.
No it hasn’t because it suddenly came back. The woman was actually Rose Stephenson but a trimmer version of her. We were in a car somewhere and had been for a drive, but had parked up on the edge of the road at the entrance to a narrow secluded lane. every time that a car came up behind us I’d move the car further down the lane. She started to become annoyed about me driving her car, not very happy at all. But then she cottoned on to what I wanted to do, which was to be alone with her in a quiet dark secluded place, so we ended up in a quiet, dark secluded place further down this little lane as you might expect.
Later, we were back on board ship and she decided that she would go for a swim. She met up with Rosemary, who already had on her bathing costume and Rose was getting into hers. Rosemary was ready first and went to dive into the pool.

This morning though I didn’t manage to beat the first or second alarm, but I comfortably beat the third alarm to the bathroom which is always a good sign. Then I came up on deck to photograph the early morning sun.

Realising that I had forgotten my medication, I went back down again. And I might just as well have gone back to bed because I hadn’t realised – and no-one had said – that we’ve passed into a different time zone (we’re at 62°N 16°W) so we’ve gained an hour and instead of it being 06:30 it’s actually 05:30.

Eventually it was breakfast time and afterwards, I spent all of the morning attacking the rest of the photos for June 2019 and organising them correctly. And there were more than enough of them too. 301 to be precise.

We had a pleasant surprise at lunchtime. We have a Nepalese sous-chef on board and he prepared a delicious curry for us. Of course, it was nothing like as spicy as I would have liked but this is a North American company with mainly North American clients so it can’t be helped.

This afternoon I went up into the observation room and read a book on Iceland. But we are in the shipping lane now so there was a fair bit of marine traffic. And on one occasion, a container ship going past bounced its wi-fi signal off us so we even had an internet connection, so I was able to wish Amber a happy birthday.

For tea, we had a pleasant surprise. All six of us were invited to sit at the captain’s table with the captain and a representative of the owners who is on board performing an audit. While we were there we had our first sight of land for a while too. Some offshore islands, including the one that suddenly appeared out of the ocean 50-odd years ago and the name of which I’ll tell you in early course (it’s called Surtsey).

But I didn’t stay too long because I was struggling to avoid bursting out into a fit of uncontrollable laughter. The Canadians were complaining about Muslims coming to their country and bringing all their clothing and their religion with them. So I had a close look at these Canadians to see if they were wearing buckskins, with feathers in their hair, warpaint on their faces, worshipping shamans and living in a tepee, speaking Huron or Iroquois.

Of course they aren’t.

They brought their European clothes, their European habits, their European religion and their European language with them. North Americans don’t “do” irony of course, but the hypocrisy of these people is totally staggering.

I had to walk away before I either burst out laughing or before I said something completely injudicious.

It’s quite late now but I’m staying up until late. It’s beautiful weather outside and I’m sure that we are going to have another magnificent sunset. It will be worth waiting for.

And I was right.

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