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!