Well oil settled at 71.40 bits a barrel, down 6.80 from the prior close, after Windfall Margin marked the 09:00 print. The print followed a night in which 124 commercial hulls cleared the Brant Gut. The Canterlot Council's caution on the Gut expired at midnight. The Wonderbolt corridor card in the morning packet still listed commercial traffic at zero.
The third shift at Brant Tower flew a west-southwest wind at 14 knots, gusts 18, ceiling 1,600, visibility five leagues. Gale Report's 16:00 sheet had scheduled a shut: 30 knots, ceiling 400, no commercial passage after dusk. The 30 never showed. Crew Chief Harl Sedge kept the ceiling lamps lit and the lane marks on the water. The lead hull, South Well lamp 19, took the turn at 00:16. Hull 124 cleared Brant Light at 05:52.
Sedge has run the third shift for nine years. He keeps the slate the day sheet copies at dawn.
"The wind was 14," Sedge said. "I had hull lights from the turn to the light. Somepony can call that shut. The barges already left."
The day sheet for the caution read 11 hulls, then 9, then 6. Sedge's slate for those three nights read 40, 44, and 51, each line already inside the turn and each line filed as waiting on weather. Sixthday's day sheet read 4. His slate read 62. Gale Report had cancelled that wind at 21:00. The day sheet left the cancellation in the drawer.
The 124 had been sitting in the outer roadstead since Sixthday. Two low passes by unmarked fliers put the Council's trade desk on a three-day caution. Hulls inbound to Kettil Landing held outside the turn and burned their own lamp oil waiting. The South Well Combine told buyers the caution would run through the next moon and that the emergency schedule, 89.10 a barrel, still applied. The Council let the caution lapse. At 00:01 the roadstead emptied into the Gut in single file, one length apart, the spacing the tower uses when the ceiling is ordinary.
Director Ansel Marr briefed at 07:30 with 89.10 still on the board behind him and took a question about sentiment.
"The market is pricing a rumor," Marr said. "Our guidance remains a constrained lane."
The 84 he offered the room at 07:10 did not place. Windfall Margin's book showed the first sale at 76.20, four minutes after lamp 19 was logged, and a low at 70.90 before the 09:00 mark lifted the print to 71.40. Volume on the morning card was 410,000 barrels. Arcane Express Sparks Rail took 36 of the hulls onto the inland train before noon and cut the Kettil haul rate to the print.
The corridor card reached the press table folded. At 19:10 the east shutter pin on Brant Tower sheared, and Sedge needed a shim. The only card stock on the hook was the Wonderbolt posting, "commercial hulls: zero," still warm from the evening packet. Folded twice, it held the shutter. Reserve flier Piper Fen, a spare on the tower hook, flew two circuits over the line to keep the ceiling even. On the second circuit she taped a left fore fetlock, landed, and turned the card over. She marked the hulls on the back in lamp grease, in tens, then the remainder. The grease read 124. The shutter left a crease through the second ten.
"They left me off the card," Fen said. "Then the card was busy. I counted what went by."
Sergeant Orla Vetch of the Wonderbolt press office collected it at 08:05 and held it by the dry corner.
"The posted card is the status," Vetch said.
At 09:00 the replacement card was still in the tray. The packet that reached Canterlot read zero. The tower kept the greased copy.
Marr's office filed the Council delivery note at 21:40, roadstead still full, forty minutes left on the caution. The note listed 2,200,000 barrels as unavailable, priced at 89.10.
By 04:10 the third-shift slate had 1,860,000 of them past Brant Light.
Sedge copied the 04:10 line onto the day sheet at 06:02 and clipped the Council note beside it. The note still carried 2,200,000 barrels at 89.10. Of those, 1,860,000 were already east of Brant Light and on the morning card at 71.40. Fen flew the open water once on the taped fetlock and put 41 minutes on the grease card, lamp 19 to the light.
The spread was 17.70 a barrel. Marr's clerk kept the 89.10 column as firm through the 09:00 mark and set the print in the margin. Vetch's packet left at 09:12 with the corridor still at zero.
The margin was 32,922,000 bits.
