Month: April 2022

Last night was a rough passage for a landlubber like me, with strong winds and 10-foot swells. The night before, the ship was rocking, but last night it was pounding. The captain apologetically announced that conditions would be a bit uncomfortable, but our situation wasn’t bad, and just enough to remind us that we were really at sea.

Of course, it can get much worse — here’s a youtube video where it was substantially worse — you can hear an authentic example of the emergency signal (7 short blasts, then a long one).

The rocking motions are roll, pitch, and yaw, like an airplane. Yaw wasn’t noticeable, but roll and pitch were strong enough to make it impossible to walk in a straight line. Roll and pitch are rhythmic vertical motions, with the ship’s buoyancy trying to return to level. Roll had a period of a few seconds; pitch had a longer duration. (On the other hand, yaw is a horizontal rotation with no vertical component and no passive returning force. A yaw motion is essentially a tiny course change that requires autopilot or human correction to undo.)

Of course, all these motions combine unpredictably. The ship moves as a rigid body in a complex dance, and as long as it’s not too bad, you can enjoy it.

However, when conditions got slightly worse, the water slapped the hull explosively, and a new form of motion manifested. Rather than moving as a rigid body, the ship vibrated like a colossal gong, with a pitch of about 1.5Hz. This ringing sometimes persisted for several seconds (though generally less than 10 seconds). I suspect this vibration came from the waves striking the ship’s bow at an angle.

When the ship slammed even harder, though, sometimes there was a higher frequency vibration, maybe 5Hz, that decayed within 2-3 seconds — a violent shaking motion that rattled small objects.

These vibratory modes must be from the flexing of the ship itself, and the frequencies probably reflect the natural resonant frequencies of the ship.

Funchal, Madeira, Portugal.

You could teleport here from a street in Lisbon and not notice any change. Lisbon on an island. But we spent almost no time at Funchal, the main city and the main port, and instead, we boarded a bus for our package tour, “Scenic Madeira”. After a 45-minute harrowing bus ride over very narrow, very curvy mountain roads, we arrived at Pico do Arieiro, the highest point you can reach by car. The view was exquisitely scenic, but the wind was fierce and icy and more than I could bear — I stayed inside the coffee shop.

On the way back, we stopped at a wine shop to sample some Madeira. Very sweet.

In April 2022 we took a cruise, a highly privileged cruise. A mental health cruise. Ten choppy days, mostly island hopping, leaving from Lisbon. Then Madeira, three Canary Islands — La Palma, Tenerife, and Lanzarote — Gibraltar, Cadiz (Seville), and finishing at Barcelona.

This is what I see out my window as I type this. The night before last we were in Lisbon, jet-lagged and exhausted.  Now we are roughly halfway to Madeira, and far from land. I slept ’til noon, and woke up groggy. Now, with three cups of coffee, I feel much better.

The internet access on the ship is fair — they block streaming video, but text and stills load OK. Sufficient to work on this blog, at least. I brought a couple of ebooks on WordPress, and I’ve been skimming them. I’ve learned that I’m doing it all wrong. I should pick a topic and stick to it instead of just rambling on with whatever interests me at the moment. That advice rings true — it describes the kind of blogs I follow, anyway. So I guess this blog is doomed to obscurity.

The ship is the venerable RSS Voyager — our fifth cruise on the Voyager. It’s our second cruise since the pandemic. Masks are required unless you are in your stateroom or eating or drinking. Most of what we do outside the stateroom is eating and drinking, so not a burden. Unlike in the yahoo areas in the States, compliance is near 100%, and it was nearly 100% in Lisbon. At lunch, somebody complained that they asked for a glass of water, and it took forever to arrive. White privilege vented at an Asian waitress, a jarring note.

There is a soft slow creaking sound as the ship rocks in the following swell. An almost unnoticed sound of waves and wind, and a quiet hum from the motors. It’s very quiet. Leaning forward with my elbows on the desk and my chin in my hands, I think I should take a nap.