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Well as I awake I notice immediately that the ship is rolling in a way not yet experienced on this voyage. The motion is quite soothing and not disturbing at all. The captain has advised us that as we enter the bay of Biscay the sea will be force 8 with a 8m swell. Reassuringly He tells us that this is well within the safe operation limits of the vessel! I should hope so.
Tonight is the last night ball so we are hoping it's not too rough to stop us getting fully involved or more importantly imbibing with the usual gusto.
Whoops! I clearly did not heed the weather advisory because as afternoon turned into early evening you couldn't walk anywhere without the aid of the handrails. Poor Wendy was confined to her bed and any aspirations we may have had for a final last night ball were well and truly out the window. From 5pm onwards the sea went mad! He bay of Biscay lived up to its reputation, Wendy had nothing to eat and I just nipped out for a light bite and was back in bed by 10pm. Night time brought no relief the captain told us there was a force 9 storm and everyone should take great care when moving about the ship.
We can't moan really as we have travelled so far with a flat calm sea we were overdue a storm. For what it's worth I enjoyed it. I did feel light headed and a little alarmed when the ship crashed down the waves as we were at the front and you could hear the sound of the Sea crashing against the hull. Other than that it was quite an experience.
Ship info; what is port and starboard? Well you will know port is the left and starboard is right, but did you know they were not always known by these names. In the early days of shipping the rudder of a ship was traditionally like a large oar at the back of the ship and to the starboard side. For this reason it was called the steer board side. Because of this you could only land the ship ashore on the opposite side so that was called the land board side. in time the rudder changed to its now normal central position but the names remained.
In the 1st world war lots of overseas sailors were enlisted (Indian and west Indian etc.) they were easily confused between steer board and land board when said quickly out at sea. And so it changed to steer board and port (as that was the side that always docked at port). Later steer board was morphed into its current starboard. So there we have it... I'm a right old salty now...
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