Motion of the Ocean – At Sea – [09/18/2011]

I’ve said before that there are things you have to deal with ship-side that you wouldn’t think of worrying about when you work most shore-side jobs. Missing the ship is one of the obvious ones, the other is something that’s often easy to forget – at least as as a passenger: we are constantly battling against Mother Nature. It’s usually a relatively easy fight, but right now we’re at the tail end of the Alaska season and Mamma Ocean is in a right high dungeon temper tantrum.

We received heavy weather warnings from the captain at the end of the last cruise, so we knew this was coming. The passengers didn’t (it’s not the kind of thing you necessarily want to mention on the first day – welcome aboard, by the way we’re going to hit a storm). As we left Seattle we were lashing down anything that could roll, fall or otherwise crash during the night. Stowing everything away. A lot of us even went so far as to unplug/unhook our cabin TVs so we could put them on the floor – unnecessary as it turned out – but just in case…

After the party band set last night we were all sitting eating chocolate (courtesy of my mother), when we all just looked at each other

Do you guys feel anything?

Nope

Headshakes all around the table. This was after midnight (the proper time for chocolate and milk if you live on a ship!) – the storm had been predicted to hit at 11pm. You could feel a tiny bit of a long low swell moving the ship a wee bit more than usual, but other than that nothing felt out of the ordinary. For a few blissful hours we thought we’d dodged it.

We thought wrong.

It hit us about 2am. I woke up at 5am to the sensation of feeling like I was going to fall right out of bed (thankfully I sleep on the bottom bunk), and considering I live below the waterline (and work 10 decks above it) – that’s not a good sign. And it got considerably worse. What had started out as a long low swell became solid white caps, a pitching bow and a yaw that had us all feeling like we were going to fall sideways. glasses crashed, signs fell over, and for only the fifth time in my whole life, this water girl went down with seasickness.

Ultimately we instituted a route change  – something we had been advised would happen already though we couldn’t discuss it until it became official. Hubbard Glacier is out of the question in this weather, and unfortunately so is Sitka. Instead we’re going back to Narnia (that is to say Tracy Arm) and extending our stay in Ketchikan and Victoria.

Juneau is the only port that stays the same. Part of me was hoping that would alter too – as it would mean that Hunt’s wife could stay on board longer and I would be able to keep my dance-partner-in-crime, but alas she’s probably on way to the airport as we speak 🙁

In the meantime, we’ve altered all the shows so that the dancers will only take the stage on days when we’re in the Inside Passage – as it is the singers were having a hard time staying on their stools during rehearsal for the broadway show!

Just Momma Ocean, reminding us once again that she’s in charge, and we’re only here on her say so…