When the announcement bell rings at 9:15 in the evening, it’s rarely heralding good news. In this case, it was news that wasn’t precisely unexpected as the ship had been corkscrewing like well…a cork…for the last hour and a half.
Cape Horn, despite the fact that we rounded it in the early hours of this morning, is still living up to its reputation.
The Captain announced that the sea height had risen earlier than expected (we had expected not to hit the rougher weather until much later in the evening) putting us now in the face of 5 – 7 foot swells (that’s waves that are as tall as me at their lowest point), and gale force winds coming from the worst possible direction; causing the ship to corkscrew instead of just yawing or pitching. It’s doing both at once, and if a door is loose or a drawer doesn’t lock it will open and close on it’s own under the motion of the ship.
Fortunately we don’t have a cast show tonight, so there’s no worries about the dancers getting injured.
No matter what, we are always at the mercy of Mother Nature out here, and it seems that at the moment she is not in the greatest of moods.
There’s no danger of course, the ship is built to take weather like this and worse, but it doesn’t mean it’s particularly comfortable.
The ship gets very quiet in weather like this ,most of the guests head to their cabins to ride out the storm, and as for the crew, we just busily go about our routine, making sure that nothing falls or is in a position to fall. Once the announcement came over I scurried about the library locking down all the cabinets, putting away all the display books, tucking the signs under the desk, anything that could fall, was taken off what it could fall from. Down in crew quarters, books are being removed from shelves, diffusers are being stored in drawers..
Mother Nature’s rollercoaster, welcome aboard! Please make sure your safety harnesses are secured!