Gijs runs outside with a flushed head and turns to the helmsmen ‘What is happening’ the helmsmen looks back at Gijs, then looks at the compass, then looks at Gijs again. ‘I have no idea, its not working any more, I cant get it back on course’. Gijs looks around as the Tecla is turning in a wide angled turn and is nearly 180 degrees off her course, but the compass keeps pointing at the same course..
You know it is going to happen, you are sort of waiting for it.. but then when it happens, it still takes you by surprise. The angle between the true north pole and our compass is getting so small, that it’s reaction has slowed down and has now stopped working. The compass has become useless and is spinning on its own. After doing a 360′ turn on purpose and removing magnets inside the compass, it is still not back to normal, and so we are navigating on sight and GPS. Keep that iceberg to your port side and keep an angle of 30 degrees with that cloud, because even the sun is no help to us here.
Other than that, we are making our miles to Canada under engine again. We sailed out of our comfortable breeze this morning and had to start the engine not to be caught by the South current running along the coast here.
We have had the sun set and sun rise in one watch and both the setting sun and rising sun where an amazing sight. We started our watch at 00:00 last night and it was foggy again. We could see the sun every now and then through the patches, but it was a very watery sun (as we say in the netherlands). Then at 00:45 it started setting and the fog started to lift. An orange ball was visible through the patches as it disappeared behind the horizon. It stayed light, it does not go dark at all these nights, and then the color of the sky starts turning to a morning blue green and the sun started rising again at 03:15. The sky was completely cleared by then, just as the sun broke the horizon it looked green by the refraction, awestruck I just sat there staring. WHAT A VIEW!!! It was soon up completely and I am sure that had I taken a picture, everybody would have said we were in the Caribbean, not on our way to the North West Passage. Such a deep color of orange and so much warmth, yet the temperature did not rise!
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