North Sea Tales

New supplies, chemicals oils, tools, etc were rechecked, and the rounds completed in 5 mins.

“All ok down here”, – reported the Chief, to the Skipper on the phone.

“Thanks, now get your arse back up here, and tell the 2nd to keep his eyes on everything down there. Aye, and I am switching off the thrusters now, they are no use in this.”

The 2nd Mate looked out over the floodlit deck.

“All ok back there Skipper!”

“Good, now go down and tell the all the lads, to get their gear on and standby”

“You get rigged up as well”

“Get the window hatches looked out, and the gear ready to fit them!”

Off the 2nd Mate went, squeezing past the Chief making his way up from below.

By now the ship would normally have been on autopilot, and the ship would be following the courses, etched into the paper charts on the bridge chart table.

Tonight no-one needed to be looking at the course or the chart, and in any case they were all secured in the chartroom table drawers.

The ships course was being plotted on the navigation electronics, just a series of digital readouts, but they were interpreted at a glance by the navigators on board, and if anything was wrong, such as a depth, or a course or a distance to a known headland on the radar, remedial action and course changes would be made. This ship and crew had transited to the various North Sea Oil installations many times before, they had the experience.

Instead, the Skipper was concentrating on edging the vessel out to sea, away from the dangerous shallows, that caused the waves to increase in size and steepness, spending all their pent up energies, from sometimes thousands of miles away, at this “small in the scheme of things” ship. In that dark howling beast of a night.

They had progressed a quarter of a nautical mile past the fairway buoy.

The Skipper and Chief and Mate were on the bridge, the Skipper was still steering by hand, trying to wrestle the ship back to a safe course, whilst the seas and wind and tide, tried to force her off course.

She ploughed through the increasing swell and waves, but the Skipper using the least power possible, to stop the ship, ploughing through a wave, instead of riding up and over it.

Suddenly it went quiet, just for long enough for everyone to notice.

The passing of the quietness was tenable.

“Shit!”

It was the Skipper who released it first, as he had witnessed this before, but far away in a different ocean, but one famed for rogue waves, off the coast of South Africa.

This was the silence caused by the wind being interrupted by something large enough to prevent the wind reaching the ship. It was something that allowed a ship 4 stories high, to be obscured from.

He pulled back on the engines, and switched on the thrusters in one deft movement.

“Hang on, guys!!”

It’s a big one…