The first day of the North Atlantic Odyssey saw us off the East Anglian coast and sailing North, past Lincolnshire, Yorkshire and Northumberland.
We had crossed to the UK side of the North Sea to pass up the West side of the Dogger Bank: There was a Westerly wind and the crew also said that the seas would be more comfortable on the English side. The swell was pretty light
Welcome to my home on sea days, albeit I would swap to the starboard bridge wing if the wind or glare made that a better location: I occasionally could be found in the restaurant at meal times, at the tea and coffee machines and attending mandatory briefings
With the mild temperatures and light seas, some of the passengers were watching from the lower decks
Two of my cabin mates: Luc (with the hat) and Joris
Our route to Aberdeen, where we would be joined by the rest of the British passengers: I was the only Brit who had decided to travel to Vlissingen to join the Plancius
I hadn't realised how cluttered the North Sea coast was.
This wind farm dwarfed this fishing boat: The wind farm off the Brighton coast is providing protected areas for Fish to breed and perhaps this fishing boat is taking advantage of a similar level of protection helping fish stocks by this wind farm
One of the oil platform complexes we passed
This is part of the York gas field: It's a natural gas reservoir and production facility that is about twenty miles off the Yorkshire coast
Bird wise it was fairly quiet, with a few typical Seabirds. It got busier as we passed Bempton Cliffs, but we were well outside the twelve mile territorial limits and thus we missed many of the numbers of Seabirds we would have seen had we been closer to the land.
Gannet: The scattered black feathering indicates this is a fourth year individual
As we passed the Lincolnshire coast, we saw a number of Grey Seals. Not surprising given the decent-sized colonies at beaches like Donna Nook.
I was generally running the ORCA Oceanwatchers app at sea to record Cetacean and Marine Mammal sightings. At least, the Grey Seals meant it wasn't an empty day, as I only saw brief views of a lone unidentified Dolphin during the day.
Grey Seal: On views like this, they can be separated from Common Seals by having parallel nostrils
There was a good sunset at the end of the evening. Something we weren't going to see again after we left Shetland.
Zooming into the sunset with the big camera and under-exposing the photos produced some interesting post-apocalypse images
I do like these zoomed-in photos of sunsets
It had been a good first day at sea and it allowed me the time to get to know many of the Dutch and Belgium Birders on the Plancius. The next day we were due in Aberdeen to pick up another seventeen, many British, passengers.
