Days at Sea

The Trip to No Where – Five unexpected days at Sea

We made it to Trapani in Sicily on a sunny warm Saturday morning  and while there was a simple tour to see gardens, Bob and I chose instead to take a walk through the town which was a very up-scale tourist destination for Italians.  We poked into stores looking for needle and thread, found them and returned to the ship. Our next stops were to be Menorca and Mallorca and we had a planned day at sea before that. However, Mother Nature had other plans. As we left the pier in Trapani, the wind started kicking up – and as they say – That’s all She Wrote.

Since that Saturday afternoon, our valiant little sailing ship has been fighting 6 meter swells (18 feet) and wind sitting ‘on our nose’ which means that the ship has had to go under motor (sailing ain’t possible when the wind is in front of you)  at a blistering speed of 1-2 knots/hour.  At this rate we’ve been going more backwards than forwards and being bumped and battered with every wave.

The first signs of impending disaster were the white ‘barf bags’ being placed along all inside railings as we came from dinner on Saturday, then there was the metal bed protector put up by our steward to stop us from being thrown out of the bed – two very bad signs that we were in for a rough ride.

By mid-day Sunday, having been under motor for 24 hours, we’d gone about ¼ of the distance required to reach our next port and the captain said, well we we’ll skip the port of Cartagena to allow us to make our other ports of call.  That was followed the next day by the decision that we would skip going to Menorca and Mallorca so that we could make the last two ports:  Motril – the harbor which leads one to Granada &The Alhambra, and Malaga where we have to go because it is the end of this leg of the tour… there are people waiting to get on the ship, and another group waiting to get off.  At this point we’re thinking that most people would like to abandon ship….. but, not our merry quartet.

While the number of passengers at dinner has dwindled to about 25% of the total, and the crew is showing shades of green themselves, we four have maintained our cheery attitude, reminding ourselves that this is just part of the adventure of being on a sailing ship.  There are no big motors that can be brought to use, and if the wind is blowing from the wrong direction there can be no sails. So all one can do is hunker down, and slowly, slowly move from east to west. And so each night the bulletin slipped under our door to tell us about the exotic harbors we will see the next day simply says:  Mediterranean Sea or Balearic Sea.

Evidence of the strength of the storm we are passing through is that this morning – Tuesday – a calm day – the jib sails were found to be shredded to bits and the bow-sprit net, which one would normally enjoy lying on, had huge gaping holes in it as well.  Someone’s head was going to roll: strong storm, high winds, rough seas, and the sails were neither battened down, or better yet removed.  Instead the jibs are rags and new ones will be hoisted when the winds finally are cooperative.

This is an adventure. The hardy passengers sit up in the lounge with kindles, puzzles, computers and books at hand (being cooped up in a cabin in choppy seas does not engender calm stomachs). The staff try to provide games and quizzes to entertain us, and the poor galley crew has to try and create nice meals when they themselves would probably like to stretch out and sleep.  We await each update from the cruise director, hoping that we will get to Motril; that the storms will abate; and that we all will be able to get up on deck to walk, get some fresh air, and enjoy our days at sea.

We are feeling especially sorry for a young couple on board: “the kids” as they have been named. They are married less than a year, and chose for their first cruise ever, to be on a sailing vessel.  We assume that this is their first and last cruise since both have been sick as dogs for three days.  Then there are the ten people from Roads Scholar who thought they were coming on a tour to visit interesting harbors – which originally had included Tunisia, and instead they find themselves on a bucking, slow-moving sailboat going, very slowly, nowhere.

Otherwise, our fellow passengers seem to be of two different ilk: those who feel that they are experts on sailing, on square riggers, on weather and they articulate in quite sonorous voices their wisdom as to what has happened, what will happen, and what should happen – most of it drivel. And then the quiet ones who sit with their books, their puzzles, their alcohol …and these seem to be calm.  There are people we avoid at all costs because they appear to have verbal diarrhea – they do not stop yabbering and while there are a few gems amidst the drivel, it is too endless.  And if they’re not talking they’re asking inane questions which have been answered at least twice by the cruise director in his talks, but they chose not to absorb it, or simply that they want to ask again and again in case the words change.  Am I getting torqued?   Just a wee bit.

To date there have been only four people who fell over while sitting at dinner –  one moment they were calmly eating dinner,  the next – they were on the floor.  And then there’s the china closet in the dining room that simply tipped over breaking china inside; or the bar glasses which all slid off the bar and shattered with much noise.  The rule is: one hand for the ship, and one hand for you;  and for god’s sake don’t take your hands off your beer glass!

And so we await our arrival on Friday in Motril, Spain.  While the east coast of the states is suffering the chaos of the Superstorm, caused by hurricane Sandy, we jolly sailors enjoy one of the stronger storms in the Mediterranean.  And who says there’s no global warming?

But now it’s Wednesday morning, and we are creeping along about 20 miles off the coast of Algeria. Once again there are changes to our schedule.  We had planned to arrive in Almeria, Spain, (a new port which had been added simply to give people a chance to go ashore {and free WiFi!}) on Thursday at mid-day, but now that port has been scrapped as well and so we’re heading directly to Motril, to arrive sometime on Thursday …and we’ll stay there overnight.  This means that it will have been five days at sea. And right now we hear from the Star Flyer, ahead of us, that the Atlantic is quite rough as well.   JOY!