Day 10 - 11/29 - Santarem

Making Lemonade out of Lemons

Today's entry will start with my log of the events following an emergency alarm that went off just after 4am. I ended up being up from then until midnight. If you don't want to review the detail, skip the next section.

4:22am emergency alarm

4:40am Captain on PA announced we were stuck on a mud bar in the navigational channel (near Monte Allegre per Google Maps). There was no stopping sensation (later I learned others had felt it); HAL Internet was off and remained off most of the day. We had T-Mobile cell service through the day.

4:52am Captain announced fleet operations in Seattle had been notified; emergency services put on notice; problems with the satellite link; following protocols for assessing water intrusion in the engine room; no further announcements until there are material changes.

5:20am the rear thrusters were activated

5:43am rear thrusters powered down; slight forward motion

5:50am thrusters off; no movement

5:51am forward thrusters on

5:54am rear thrusters on a reduced power

5;56am increased power on rear thrusters

5:57am thrusters off; slight reverse motion 

6:06am no feeling of directional motion

6:08am front thrusters activated

6:12am front thrusters off

6:13am slight reverse motion

6:16am slight forward motion

6:18am can see front thruster wake; no power sensation

6:48am no apparent directional motion. Going outside to look around in the daylight 

6:52am - Outside. One tender (#9) deployed And circumnavigating the ship

7:28am tender still deployed; ship is stationary 

8:19am Captain's announcement that we are still lodged on the sand bank and they are moving ballast to free pressure on the pressure point. They will make another attempt to free the ship with ship's power. If that is unsuccessful, tugs will be called in. As I type this a cargo ship is sailing down river on our port side. Also there are deck crew sweeping up all the bugs that accumulated overnight.

9:42am stern thrusters are working 

10:56am stern thrusters off but appears full right rudder with propellers on. Dark mud boils up and mixes in swirls with the lighter brown colored river water. Virtually no other debris. Just Andes silt.

11:12am rear thrusters back on

11:16am front thrusters on

11:17 rear thrusters off; some clockwise movement; aft is moving out into channel clockwise. Front is in a fixed position. 

11:24am continued rear thruster action. Not much mud boiling; some forward thruster action.

11:30am continued slow clockwise movement in the aft

11:32am rotating counterclockwise 

11:33am rotating clockwise again; some forward movement!

11:34am moving under our own power

We spent the rest of the day sailing up river to Santarem where we arrived before the announced arrival time of 5pm. It's simply unbelievable how large this river is. It's like riding on a super smooth brown ocean. The only activity I attended was Ian's World Trivia game featuring images from around the world.

It was announced just before we docked that we would be overnighting in Santarem and the onboard time was 8am tomorrow morning. All HAL excursions were cancelled and there was no free port shuttle available to town (about 2 miles away). So we decided to make our way ashore and there we met a guide (Pierre Schwarz) I had been corresponding with for the past couple days acting as a intermediary to reschedule the shore excursion they were on. After we explained our situation we asked if he could do a 'mini' tour for us until dark. For $20/pp, he agreed to do it. We filled a van with 14 people and headed off to the city. We visited the cathedral (very pretty blue and not ornate), a viewpoint, and the town museum. We got back to the ship just after 7pm in the dark and there was absolutely no port security. We just walked in unchallenged. BTW, the port is owned and operated by CARGILL which exports a lot of soybeans grown nearby.  

We ate a late dinner in the lido and I exchanged some US $ for Brazilian Real with another guest. We spent a leisurely evening just hanging out on the aft deck before I went down to the photo department and purchased using some of our shipboard credit a new Nikon P900 camera to replace my 4 year old Canon that I purchased in Chile after my Nikon DLSR was stolen in Santiago. The principal feature of this camera is a 80x optical zoom lense.

Finally just before midnight I crawled into bed a little tired, but filled with memories of our day on the Amazon. Maybe, someday when I'm old, I'll regale our grandkids the tale of when we were stuck on a mud bar in the Amazon for 7 hours. Oh wait, that's now.
 

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