Off the Spanish Coast

The air changed today. You feel it before you notice it. The wind coming over the bow stopped having an edge to it and started to feel like something you would sit outside in.

Spain is somewhere off to port, invisible, present only as a slightly busier plot on the radar and a change in the accents on the VHF.

I went up to the bridge in the afternoon and the Captain was there, which is not unusual, and he spoke to me, which is. Magnus Halvorsen does not waste words. What he said, in total, was:

"Warm now. Mediterranean tomorrow night. Do not fall off the ship."

Then he went back to whatever he had been looking at, and I stood there for a while feeling as though I had been given a briefing, a forecast and a personal safety policy in twelve words. I have sat in ninety minute meetings that delivered less.

I have started to understand the rhythm of the ship well enough to know when I am in the way, which is progress. Early morning on the bridge is fine. Watch handover is not. The mess between 11:30 and 12:00 belongs to the deck crew and a passenger loitering there with a mug is a small act of vandalism.

Container reached my ribs last night. Noted.