Atlantic Crossing - Part Three

In spite of a rather turbulent sea, Mel and I both slept straight through the night. Guess the excitement of our big Celebration Day and the day of travel has caught up with us. We had left the balcony door wide open all night and woke to a howling wind. It was blowing like I had never seen. Some time during the night the winds had picked up. I got up and looked at the clock. 7:30AM. Outside and it looked kinda like 3:00AM dark. It first occurs to me that the clock is incorrect. I turn on the TV and it confirms the time. Looks like we had headed into somewhat of a storm overnight. I headed back out to the balcony, grabbed the banister and looked over the edge.

"It was an angry sea, Billy." Although from six stories up it's difficult to make out the contrast of what was really going on. But it sure looked like a lot of white and not much blue. The on-board weather channel on the TV was very cool. It showed you by a satellite GPS image exactly where you were and it gave you a kind of big picture of what was going on around the ship at any given moment. The weather, the wind velocity, the temperature and depth of the water, the surface height of the waves, etc., etc.

At the moment we were experiencing winds over 45 miles an hour. They were coming at us from the southeast and we were heading into them doing 18 knots. The resulting wave action was cresting at 25 feet high. Looking over the side they didn't seem that big a deal. I looked at the screen on the Apple plasma. The ship was still west of Newfoundland. The ocean floor was about 4,000 feet down. I stood for a second unhinged from the bannister and felt the sway. I had not really noticed it up to now but this baby was rockin'!

I glanced over at my girl with her head on the pillow and she was still sleeping like a baby in a cradle, rocking gently on the porch. I opened the door to our stateroom and stepped into the hall. The corridors on these ships are like very narrow bowling alleys. About the same size. Certainly no bigger. More likely they're a lot narrower. With walls. And that's the best part cause the walls are the only thing that keeps you on the straight and narrow. You use 'em to bounce off of as you try and walk a straight line. I saw a number of men using them every time they saw an attractive woman coming at them. It's a narrow corridor after all. And the ship is a wobblin' like a slowing top.

As they were about to pass the gals in the hall, they would actually run into 'em full on. Arms and hands spread akimbo, out everywhere to grab on and steady the whole mess. And who's to say where you land in a train wreck? They'd make their excuses, all very reasonable, in the aftermath. "Oh, pardon me. I'm terribly sorry. Excuse me. Oh my gosh! Are you OK"? Then they would straighten up and move on down the line.

It wouldn't surprise me a bit if this were one of the more popular, unwritten pastimes on a cruise ship.