Days 12 and 13: At Sea

Days 12 and 13 – North Atlantic

First day out from Rykjavik and an hour less sleep as another time change fell last night. Seas are low, the sky is cloudy. My deck temperature reads 60. By mid morning we have swells from the port quarter forward, coming from weather well to the ENE. The temp dropped by 5º.

The ship is quiet in the morning as many are exhausted and the time change impacts schedules. We use this time to catch up on plans for upcoming ports, to attend lectures on upcoming ports, transfer photos from cameras and update the logbook. 1100 we watched a container ship pass by on a reciprocal course. Other than that, no other traffic.

We enter the Norwegian Sea and in the afternoon the seas began to decline. Besides being tired the passengers and crew must deal with a slowly pitching ship, as walking forward and aft the corridors and spaces rise and fall. (Pitching is the up and down motion of the ship bow to stern. Rolling is side to side motion. Stabilizers on this ship reduce rolling by about 80%. There are no stabilizers made for these ships to reduce pitching.) We quickly became adept to moving in spurts which entails detecting when the direction of walk is going to be “downhill” in that direction,and walking quickly downhill. When the deck begins to rise in the pitch, we slow to a stop and wait as the walk would become uphill. Then another spurt of downhill walking. Walking across the ship makes the pitching a different sensation so we “tack” which in sailing is a zig-zag motion relative to the wind. In this case it means walking a zig-zag course to walk uphill and downhill while crossing side to side in the spaces. Mixing the two together when moving diagonally is necessary.

Noon report position is 060º 56.91N 015º 40.26'W . Speed 14.7 knots. Course 093º. Depth 5,780' .

Wind S 8k (force 3), Temp 50º F, 10ºC. Total nautical miles of voyage: 2,858. Distance to next port 622nm. Sunrise 0521. Sunset 2253.

Dinner tonight was in the Pinnacle Grill for the best food in the ship served in a relaxed and elegant atmosphere. We had as our guest a Filipino (Philippines) crew member friend from a couple of voyages past. I think we closed the place. During dinner the swells built again so the walk back to the cabin 3 decks up and down the length of the ship, tacking and walking in spurts worked off the souffle of dessert.

Day 13 we continue heading East. Last night the swells continued which was a fine motion for sleeping. Our bed is orientated fore and aft to when lying down it is feet up head down then feet down and head up. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. ZZZZzzzzzzz. Every now and then there is a loud thump, a shudder and a shake as we plow through a larger swell of an off angle. The swells are about 8-10'. Very little wave action. This day filled up also. Julie met with Barbara, the shore excursion specialist to work out our plans for upcoming ports where we will be touring independent of the organized tours. I met with a friend to exchange photos we took of each other in Iceland. There were more port lectures, a couple of meetings of the Court of Neptune in the Neptune Lounge and the usual foraging for tasty morsels. This is becoming more difficult as the menus are tired and the ship has run out of lettuce. Scuttlebutt has it that some problem with refrigeration caused the lettuce supply to be frozen and ruined. The same seems to have happened to berries, except that the ship scored some raspberries in Iceland. There does not seem to be s shortage of Hazelnut Mousse.

Noon report: 62º 41.80'N, 003º 19.26'W. Course 092º. Speed 14.1 k. Wind NE 11k (force 4). Apparent wind 22 knots off port bow. Temperature 54ºF 12ºC. Distance covered: from last port 631 nm. To next port 293nm. Total voyage 3,198nm. Humidity of 61%. That about covers it.