7u. I look outside and from above the Irish Sea a brave sun fights with the mist. I remember how Simon Carmiggelt called such a sun "a sun like a shy girl". We sail south over a slippery sea towards Cork, where we will arrive in the eve. Nowhere is land to be seen. I have the feeling that this is going to be a nice day of strolling, there is nothing on the program. That's good.

I keep breakfast simple. Polish bread with cold Polish sausage and cheese (nine out of ten also Polish, which is a bit weird, since there is no Polish on board). The Elbfeeder cleaves against a speed of 15 knots through the water. Soon we will leave the St.-George canal to sail back into the Celtic Sea.

On deck it is 13 degrees and behind a lifeboat I find shelter from the wind. This is a pleasure. I have a view of the white skyline we leave behind in a sea that looks almost black from here. It's amazing how rich the colour palette of the free sea is: it ranges from light green over azure to blue-black, with all the variations in between.

I can't get enough of the spectacle.

The sea is getting rougher and I'm getting colder. Back to the cabin.

From a kind of masochistic whim, I take out of my bag the diary that Joris Van Bree wrote during his trip to New York, aboard the mega-container ship Atlantic Sun. It was after that trip that he came up with the idea of "Cptn Zeppos". He has already told me about it, about the difference between big and very small cargo's like my Elbfeeder, but I remain curious about the passenger life on such an ocean cruiser.

And so I read how wonderful it was to take a sauna on the Atlantic Sun and then crawl into a plain white bathrobe. Sauna? Or how the captain pours wine to his guests. Wine? Appetizers are served and I read how a fresh salmon is draped on his plate. Fish? Really?

And so it goes on and on: Joris goes on board to work out, Joris flips open the sun loungers on deck, his cabin is cleaned daily, Joris takes a health walk around the ship, he is even allowed to take the helm on the bridge, because what a sympathetic pear the captain is, etc...etc...

Eventually I close my good friend's diary. I have a dry mouth and swallow the fata morgana of salmon-with-wine. The order of the world's seas is suddenly clear to me. The cruise ships are the lobsters, the big cargo's the scampi and we're the guppies.

That's the way it is: every sea voyage is different and by the way, I chose this lack of luxury myself. That's exactly the charm of the Elbfeeder and somehow I needed this too.

Second Officer Iwan - yellow T-shirt, pale face - becomes more sympathetic. We are the only ones in the mess and spoon in our Salyongka. The soup tastes real to me and I ask Iwan for more explanation.

From his limited English I understand that Salyongka is a kind of panorama of the week. I see. Something Ramon can secretly put his remains in. Iwan nods and I look at the soup with different eyes. In the leftovers-mix I recognise certain floating things and others I don't recognize.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, Iwan throws on the table that Vincent Kompany played his last match for Manchester City. Yeah, I knew that yesterday. And, dixit Iwan, he's going to be Anderlecht's new trainer. I beg your pardon? I choke, shake no, but he swears it's true. I can't hear how he got that news: radio contacts on the bridge? Satellite phone? At least it turns out to be the truth, and Iwan turns out to be a real football fanatic. His favourite player is Malinowski from...Racing Genk, for the simple reason that the striker was bought away from the Ukrainian club Shatkar Donetsk, and Donetsk happens to be Iwan's hometown. Moreover, he says: since yesterday, Racing Genk and not Club Brugge are sure of the first division title. Voilà. He's looking at me with a big face.

And so it's proved again that I don't need TV or radio here: the world news is just told about the Salyongka.

At five in the afternoon we approach Cork. The Elbfeeder takes things seriously because there is still a Portuguese boat on our spot. When we sail up the estuary of the river Lee and take another pilot on board, the Portuguese tugs up the sea along us. The timing is perfect. Waiting only costs money.

I stay on deck, because the river Lee meanders through a postcard landscape of green hills and colourful houses under white pile clouds. After every turn a new picture book opens. In the end I settle down on the only bank the Elbfeeder has: a craft construction of pallet planks and bobbins for ropes. I can't last long; the bench is made to Philippine size, so much too small. But it is a bench. By Elbfeeder standards a great luxury.

After an hour we sail past the quay where the ferries from the fixed line to Roscoff in France moor. The Connemara is waiting there. With these ferries the French writer Genoîte Groult arrived here for 27 years (from 1977 to 2003) for her annual Irish fishing holiday. In her cottage in Kerry on the west coast she also received her lover whom we know from her novel "Salt on my skin". The unbelievable coincidence is that the "Irish Diary" she wrote about it appeared in Dutch a month before my departure. I read it out breathlessly. And now, a week after the last page, I see one of the ships that brought her here year after year. (By the way: in her diary you can read that the lover in "Salt on my skin" was in reality not an Irish sailor, but an... American pilot!).

Somewhere on the river Lee, I suddenly get "network" and I call Starling for a long time. She'll be fine without me. She's sitting by the sea with the grandchildren and she's already talking in terms of "if you leave again next time, then..." I consider this as an approval and so my dream trip to Jamaïca comes a lot closer to reality.

In my cabin I work on this diary while the ship is being maneuvered against the quay. In Cork the Elbfeeder unloads 264 containers and takes 392 on board. 656 changes in total.

We're not allowed to disembark tonight, but that's no big deal. By 10 p.m. I climb the stairs to the sixth deck. Unloading is in full swing. Chief Officer Illia tells us that at best we will leave tomorrow around 18h, at the time of the high tide. But a lot depends on the dockers. On the "Irish factor". I'll say goodbye and go to sleep. Behind Illia, the captain shows up now. He's having a look across the holds. Then he turns around and starts marching silently, with his hands on his back.