A Rough Day at Sea

When I awoke this morning, I could feel the ship rocking and rolling quite heavily. At one time I would be lying in a position where my head was much higher than my feet, and in the next, my feet ere at a higher elevation thank my head. I grabbed a seasickness pill and swallowed it before I got up. I haven’t taken any for over a week now. but it seemed that today was going to be a bit rough.

 Today was just a day at sea as we traversed the first half of the 1240 kms from South Georgia to Elephant Island in Antarctica- hopefully, our next stopping point. We expect tomorrow to be the same.

 It was a little tough to shower this morning and I found that I needed to do a fancy ‘two step’ as the ship lurched from one side to the other. In the end, I found the best thing to do was to stand diagonally , brace myself, and hang on to the tap (cold side) with a  couple of fingers as I washed myself. It was interesting to see the water sloshing aground he bathroom floor and every now and then, the ship would be at the right angle for some of it to go down the plug hole.

 Breakfast was fun as when the ship rolled heavily from side to side, all the people at the buffet would lurch into the wall and then back to the central serving table as it rolled the other way.

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I sat up in the lounge on the sixth deck for most of the day as from there, I could look out across to the horizon and keep feeling well. I managed to edit quite a number of photos. The wind this morning was blowing at 55 knots and the seas were running at about 7 metres. From time to time, the bow would pitch into a wave and send spray right up to the level of the lounge on the sixth deck.

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 By lunchtime the seas had eased a little and now at nightfall, we have 25 knots of wind and a more gentle sea with only 2 metre swells. Our entertainment today consisted of a number of talks from our subject matter experts

 My medication made me quite drowsy and I spent a couple of hours this afternoon asleep on my bunk. I’m not sure whether I will sleep well tonight, but I do have a couple of movies on my iPhone that I can watch if I can’t sleep.

 We had some enormous wandering albatross flying regally around the ship at dusk, so we were able to get a few good pictures. This just meant bracing ourselves on the cold deck outside and trying not to fall over. These birds have a wing span of nearly 3 metres and spend most of their  life on the wing as they continuously circumnavigate the world.

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Bruce

Bruce is a keen traveller and photographer. This web site describes his travel and family interests

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