Packing Is Going To Be Tricky...
⬅ previous ⬆intro next ➡Day 10 ~ January 23 ~ Drake Passage
Definitely rather bouncy today! We were woken up in the night by things rattling until I managed to mostly wedge them in place. Amanda is just about ok but a lot less than 100%I go to breakfast alone, and find it rather sparsely attended. I take Amanda back some toast and a banana which will hopefully not upset her tummy too much, but unfortunately this is not the case. While I'm at the morning presentation, she is very sick and only just manages to get to the bathroom in time.
For all that, it's not as bouncy as some, though. Our ship has what's called the “Ulstein X-BOW”, which is a quite new (2005) design with particularly gentle response to waves. We have nothing to compare directly, but we've been told that the crew absolutely love it and reckon it's a major win for Drake crossings.
A bit more on the company's X-BOW web page.
Remember we're on deck six, so quite a long way above the water level when the water is flat.
As I mentioned before, our cabin is one of the most central, and hence most stable, on the ship, and as you walk the corridor towards the observation deck, it becomes quite a roller-coaster. If you are at all prone to motion sickness, you might not want to hit “Play” on the following short video, but it's worth mentioning that the motion is almost all up-and-down, not the corkscrew effect that is particularly sickening. I think this is one of the benefits of the new bow design.
The foremost cabins are not at all far back from the point I'm standing. Amanda would most certainly be a lot worse in one of those!
Me, I can't deny that I quite like it. I'm not totally immune to seasickness, but I can only think of one real instance in my life. This was back in the 1980s (a couple of years before Amanda and I got together, in fact), and one of the guys I worked with at the time was quite a keen sailor. He formed a company sailing club, and I thought it sounded like fun so I joined up. The high point was hiring an 11m yacht between half a dozen or so of us and taking a bank holiday weekend to sail around the Isle of Wight and across the Channel to Cherbourg.
Now eleven metres is quite big if you are drinking a gin and tonic on deck in the sunshine at the marina (which is a fine thing, I'm not knocking it), but it's quite small compared to Channel waves, and towards the end of the first day, I succumbed. Not too badly, nothing like the “I wish I were dead!” level that some people get, but definitely right proper poorly for a bit.
I know it must have been quite rough conditions, because even Captain Mike, our fearless leader and club founder, went down. He swore that it was salt water spashing into his beer, nothing he could have prevented, not... weakness, heaven forfend!
It passed, though, and by the end of the weekend, it was weird how our whole perspective shifted. You could be sitting in the galley having a cup of coffee (it wasn't all beer, you know), and then look out and be confused because the sea was somehow at a 45° angle to the horizontal!
Amanda and I agree on many things, but this is not one of them.
Lunch is even quieter! The bistro on deck 8 is closed, but they certainly don't need the capacity today.
I find the ship's doctor and ask her if she has something that can help Amanda, and she gives me some antihistamine tablets. They seem to work, and by dinner time, Amanda is capable of walking to the dining room and having a bit of soup and veg.
That's more or less it in terms of pictures/videos of the crossing. We won't get to see much wildlife and can't easily take pictures of what little we do. There are several presentations by team members during the day, which are interesting but not particularly worth any photos. The ship's public areas are not completely empty, but distinctly less busy than previously; even some of the team members are suffering a bit.
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