The header image is wishful thinking on my part, for it’s a wet and dull Sunday for us as we continue towards Yap Island.  We are 374 miles to the south-east and are making 16 knots. (If you are doing the maths, don’t concern yourself; 16 knots is too slow for our 7 a.m. arrival off the reef entrance, however I don’t want to start another diesel-generator for the sake of it and am waiting for the speed required to increase before doing so, more fuel saved).

Each year, we senior officers are set targets for a number of parameters, one of which is ‘fuel consumption’, there are many other factors as well, however fuel is one of, if not the largest cost in our fleet budget .  For the past 6 years or so our fuel saving target has been a saving of 3% on budget; this has been achieved each year.  A number of fuel-saving  initiatives have been implemented on our fleet, for example, silicon paint on our underwater hull, adjustments to our azipod drives and lower speeds required on itineraries.  At the end of the day though, it is management of diesel generators which have the most affect and, at the end of the day, this is down to me.  

We will be going through our arrival procedures for Yap this morning.  It is a challenging port, the gap in the reef is only 90 metres wide at the entrance and we have a beam of just over 30 metres, so there isn’t much room.  It’s somewhat disconcerting to read in the seaman’s ‘bible’, the Admiralty Sailing Directions that “Entry should be as near to low water as possible, when the reef can be seen, is recommended” 🙄

The forecast, particularly for ‘wind’, looks reasonable, however tomorrow morning will tell if we can make it or not.  I’m not surprised that a number of guests have been asking me whether we’ll get in, apparently even some of our most seasoned World cruisers have never actually been there, it has been cancelled on every occasion.

Another Captain’s dinner for me last night; I had a very enjoyable group of guests, conversation was easy and the atmosphere light-hearted.  We crossed back into the northern hemisphere as we were going to dinner, the 2nd time we have crossed the equator and 2 more to go before arrive back in Port Everglades.

I received a photo of Violet yesterday, my daughter, Liz, sent it to me and as it’s a Sunday, (for me anyway), thoughts turn to family, children and friends; an apt time to put ‘Vi’s’ smiling face on my blog post 😀