We had a very rough evening Wednesday. Then we had a very rough night. And that was followed by a very rough Thursday. The ship started listing badly in late afternoon Wednesday--the explanation was starboard winds and shifting liquids in the hold. Pretty soon the swells were significant enough I forgot to worry about the listing. By dinner time, crew was stationed all over the place to offer help to get us wherever we were going. It kept getting rougher and rougher, and the ship was riding the swells and hitting the surface pretty hard (and much too frequently). At the end of the evening, those of us who had to enter our cabins from an exterior passageway (that would include us) were accompanied to our rooms.
It was hard to go to sleep, and we woke up repeatedly during the night. In the morning, rather than going straight to breakfast on the lowest level, most folks congregated in the lounge, on the second level, to share their stories. Our cruise director made an announcement to let us know that the high winds and high swells had effectively cut our travel speed in half. We were told that we were now expected to dock at 11pm, eliminating our scenic drive on the Gaspe and our bird watching excursion around Ile Bonaventure. The plan now is to dock for the night near the town of Gaspe and see what we might be able to do early Friday to recapture some of this lost day. This will be our first and only night with the boat at rest--something that is sounding mighty good to a lot of people. There were, however, a lot of groans over the notion that we had yet another 12 hours of the big swells and rocking and rolling to endure. A number of people chose to simply go back to bed, hoping to sleep through it.
And it was indeed impressive, should one be in the mood to admire nature's power. The seas were breaking over our (second level) bow, completely washing over the windows of the lounge. The effect was even more "exciting" in the lower level dining room. We were looking up at the swells, and at times our windows were covered in water.
Jerry has had no problems with any of this. Apparently, he's a born sailor. Between my SeaBands and my Dramamine, I'm not suffering seasickness. My nerves, however, are another story. There's really nothing one can do about it, but who wants to spend multiple days of their trip doing little but hanging on and wishing for some signs of improvement? We couldn't even see the shore, so there wasn't anything much to compensate for the unpleasantness.
My attitude is holding pretty steady; Jerry's too. We're disappointed for sure, but there really aren't many options. I have tried to simply get into the rhythm of the swells. But you can't get outside, and moving around is tricky and not taken lightly. These conditions have definitely dampened everyone's spirits. We lost an entire day of our trip. The whole thing is unpleasant at best. We still may be able to do our Gaspe excursion, but we've been told we will have to forgo our trip up the Saguenay Fjord, which is/was to be our big wildlife foray.
To offer compensation, the cruise line has told us there will be an open bar for the rest of the cruise. I suspect there will be a number of people taking full advantage of that.
By 6pm, the swells finally reduced. It was still rocky, and we all looked like drunken sailors (though that may be for more than one reason now!), but comparatively it was way, way better.
Land ahoy! We've reached the Gaspe. The seas have calmed; the sun has come out.
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