(Sunday, February 7th, 2016) – plus see addendum
I have no reference point yet, so I can’t report on whether this was “unusually bad”, or “a little bad”, or “what are you talking about, this is normal”. And since I thought it was “reasonably bad”, I was too shy to ask. Maybe later.
At the junction of the Gulf of Thailand and the South China Sea, directly south of the southernmost part of Vietnam, we turned from southbound to eastbound. The Gulf of Thailand is relatively shallow, and the South China Sea is relatively deep. That may have been a factor. There have been some monsoons in Vietnam, Hong Kong, Taiwan, all in the north part of the South China Sea. That may also have been a factor. There was recently a small earthquake in Taiwan. Anyway, we hit a full day and full night worth of heavy seas, high winds, choppy and unpatterned swells, that sort of thing.
A few days later, looking at some swells, I had no clue as to their size. I was looking at them from the Pilot Deck, about 30 meters up, so it is hard to tell. The Captain said that what we were looking at were about 3 meter swells. Using that as a reference, the swells and high seas that we hit at the southern tip of Vietnam were much larger, so I estimate 4 or 5 meters. I do not trust that estimate.
By the way, the Captain said that it takes deep water and open seas to create really big swells. So, the South China Sea makes bigger swells than the Gulf of Thailand, and the Pacific Ocean makes some huge swells. He said he hopes I get to see some days at which there is no wind, lots of sun, and huge swells, out in the Pacific. Could be good! I declined to ask what size he considers “huge”.
We rolled a lot, that’s side to side. Maybe a 3 second frequency, maybe 30 degrees total, 15 each side of vertical, it’s hard to tell precisely. We pitched a lot, that’s fore-to-aft. Maybe an 8 second frequency, maybe a little faster. And every so often, like maybe once each five minutes, we got surprised by a larger than usual swell, that hit the front of the ship with force, sending a shudder down the length of the ship, and upending anything not tied down. A wallop.
It was extremely windy, so much so that the door to get onto the Pilot Deck was almost impossible to open. I poked my head outside while straining to keep it open, and decided to forego my usual stroll.
And I went back to my cabin and put on real shoes, replacing flip-flops. What was I thinking?
It was actually fun up on the bridge, because, except for those surprise shudders, you could see the roll and the pitch and the bow diving in and sending up spray. And you could hold on to rails and of course not worry about the wind. Many items on deck shook with each of those shudders. You tend to appreciate good lashing.
Back in the cabin, it was a little difficult to walk about. Better to stay seated. I thought that I had got used to the ship’s normal roll, but this was enough so that you had to hold on to something as you walked across the room to make sure that you didn’t find yourself thrown up against a wall. It wasn’t scary. It was just an effort. There was too much vibration and bouncing on the desk to feel good about spinning a laptop hard drive, and anyway aiming fingers at the keyboard was a challenge, so writing was out. Reading was okay, seated, but had that feel of reading in a jostling moving car – sometimes not the best thing to do. Playing music from my phone was good. I amused myself by attempting to pee standing up. One time only.
At night it was actually comical, trying to get some sleep. My bed is aligned fore-and-aft. If you are the type who sleeps with straight legs, like me, you are not in luck. You roll this way and that and you think you are going to roll off the bed. Then you get your legs situated to prevent rolling in one direction, but they lift up and don’t prevent you rolling in the other. Then we get hit with another shudder and nothing helps for that. A night with sleep measured in minutes at a time, and only a few sessions of that. Oh well.
Also, you learn fairly quickly how well you stowed things. “Not well at all” was the answer I got. Ha. I heard bottles rolling from one side to another in various drawers. Water bottles fell over. Luckily they were capped. The soap bar decided to slide around the bathroom floor. “What the hell is that banging in the clothes closet?” ‘Twas my jump rope, hanging up, nice heavy wood handles doing their thing. I understood now why the TV was lashed to the desk. So I had a half hour or so of “stowage education and maintenance” to quiet things down. “Quiet” is of course relative.
The seas calmed midway through the next morning. At lunch the Third Mate described the technique he uses to keep from rolling over in bed, and I think I know how to try it, next time. I napped for two hours in the afternoon, and found that many others had done the same, so I felt a little better – that I wasn’t the only one affected. Also, overnight, one of the windshields in the bridge shattered. Those windshields are way high, so I don’t think anything hit it. I think it was over-flexed in its frame during one of those shudder incidents. The windshield shattering gave me the notion that this wasn’t a totally normal situation, but I haven’t asked yet.
—– Addendum, a few days later —–
After some smooth sailing leaving Ho Chi Minh City for a couple of days in the fog, we hit another bad patch. This time we got reports. We had 7 to 8 meter swells. The wind was at about 40 knots gusting to 50. Nobody allowed on open decks. Makes you appreciate “smooth sailing”.
I’m not going to report each piece of smooth or rough water from here on out, too much is too much, unless something truly unusual warrants a separate post. There will be some photos that all look alike. Like in the Grand Canyon, the photos don’t seem to properly reflect the feeling. I have some videos that I am not putting on Dropbox for now, due to their size and my limited time uploading. They are a little better than the pics at showing the wave size and power, but still don’t have that sense of size. If I get one that captures what I want, I’ll post that one. Nothing yet.