It Was a Cool and Foggy Beginning

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Day 6, Grand Asia 2018

Thursday, Oct. 4, 2018, At Sea:

I woke up this morning to the rocking and rolling of the ship. Capt. Fred Eversen warned us of 10-foot-plus seas. By early afternoon yesterday my wine tasting in the Crows Nest (high in the front of the ship) was canceled. But the Amsterdam singers and dancers made their performance look easy last night, despite the rough seas.

From the ship’s decks the swells don’t look that big, and they look deceivingly flat in photographs. But many people coming to breakfast in the Lido this morning are lurching this way and that. It is the most common topic of conversation at the tables around me.

Stalwart walkers amidst the breaking seas

The ship’s movement and spray of the waves did not keep the determined morning walkers from their revolutions around the teak deck of the Lower Promenade.

We are sailing in the North Pacific Ocean, where the odds of cloud cover are pretty great this time of year. We are scheduled to arrive tomorrow at our first port — Dutch Harbor, Alaska. We missed this port in 2017 due to rough seas outside the harbor entrance, but so far our visit odds are looking good, although the forecast is for possible rain in the morning.

I didn’t remember much about the weather and seas from the early part of last year’s Grand Asia cruise, so I went back to my blog entries to see what I had reported.

The view from my balcony

Interesting that both last year and this year we started out with heavy fog on the first morning out of port. During the early hours Monday I heard the foghorn blowing its forlorn blast every couple of minutes. When I got up we were encased in fog, and it stayed that way pretty much all day. Mist covered my balcony.

The light breaks through one evening

By Tuesday afternoon the clouds broke up and we had periods when the sun poked through. With outside high temperatures hovering around 60 degrees, I haven’t sat on my balcony yet. The cabin has some afghan throws, but at the speed we are moving it is too windy for comfort.

I’m staying busy indoors on these sea days. The mornings are filled with breakfast and catching up on the news, then watercolor class followed by doing a little hand quilt appliqué with an informal group who stitch, crochet and knit. After lunch there are lectures to attend, happy hour in the Crows Nest and perhaps a brief nap. I’ll write about all of this later during the cruise.

If you want to read about anything specific, just ask in the comments.