RCC ANTWERP is currently maintaining 18 kts across the Atlantic
At midday Z her position was N27.9 W57.7 which is about 440 nm SE of Bermuda
She has 3040nm to go. The weather in the north of the N Atlantic is quite stormy at the moment but the weather along RCC ANTWERP’s track remains pretty calm until possibly Friday night/Saturday when from the outlook it could get a little more interesting.
ETA Zeebrugge 10 Nov and Southampton 13 Nov
TRITON ACE continues to make excellent progress down the Pacific coast of Mexico at just over 17kts.
At midday Z her position wasN17.7 W104.4 which is about 260nm NNW of Acapulco.
She is however about to hit some very unusual weather tomorrow afternoon .
We saw the same phenomena the other week when RCC ANTWERP was passing (see post 6105) but the pressure gradient caused by Hurricane Eta in the Caribbean has made the Tehuantepecer winds particularly strong at the moment. We have winds of more than 50 kts blowing out to sea and waves of up to 7 metres high being kicked up for hundreds of miles out to sea. A few vessels have routed further out into the Pacific to avoid the disturbance but TRITON ACE hasn’t yet and may have to cross the area, at a right angle to both the seas and the wind, which is localised to an area about 150nm wide. Another benefit of heading further into the Pacific would be to remain clear of a possible path of Hurricane Eta (now a category 4 monster storm) if it crosses from the Caribbean into the Pacific. Quite where this powerful hurricane will end up is anyone’s guess at the moment but one of the options is for it to end up in the Pacific. I sometimes question whether these ships receive any quality weather and routing information. We saw several instances in the last year of ships blindly maintaining their programmed route despite it taking them through forecasted Atlantic storms when a course correction of just a few degrees several days earlier would have kept them well clear (and on time). To avoid the worst of the weather out at sea she may have an option of hugging the coastline as close to the shore as possible. This reduces the wave size because of the smaller fetch and also the wind strength will be less since the main blast may still be blowing over the top of her.
At the moment she is still on schedule to arrive off Panama next Saturday evening.
She will arrive in Zeebrugge on 20 Nov and Southampton on 22 Nov
Don’t forget to enter the TRITON ACE competition -
Enter HERE
GRAND AURORA continues to load at Pier 80. Her loading has been a little slow - I don’t know why. She is due to depart tomorrow night and I estimate she will arrive in Zeebrugge around 25 Nov and Southampton possibly on 28 Nov
TOSCANA continues up the busy Malacca Strait.
We stopped receiving terrestrial AIS position reports from her after she was passing Kuala Lumpur last night. No satellite reports are being received either. I estimate that she will be about 100SW on Penang at midday and I am hopeful we will get some more position reports before she passes the Banda Aceh peninsula into the southern part of the Bay of Bengal. She will arrive in Zeebrugge on 27 Nov
TANNHAUSER has a revised schedule. She now will not dock in Shanghai until tomorrow. She remains holding offshore. (For some reason her terrestrial position reports are not being received however I have her satellite position which is in the same area) I have no idea the reason for the delay. She is not due to depart until Friday. She needs to keep an eye on Tropical Storm Atsani which should be south of Taiwan on Friday. At the moment it doesn’t look as though it will form into a typhoon but a tropical storm can have winds over 70 mph and so it is not a thing to ignore. I’m hoping that TANNHAUSER will enter the area after the storm has passed and so unlike TOSCANA she should not be in any rush to leave early and a delay might just work in her favour. I’m also hopeful that the storm might start to decay - it seems pretty stationary at the moment about 400nm SE of Taiwan.
Do you have an idea of how many days or maybe hours before zeebrugge we could expect to get tracking from landbased receivers again @Mr Miserable
