At Sea on Our way to New York

Monday 3^rd September 2016 & Tuesday 4^th September 2016

Monday

Today we are at sea on our way to New York, bypassing our scheduled port of Halifax in Nova Scotia. Both sea and wind conditions are nothing out of the ordinary, in fact it is quite a nice day with flat seas.

We went to a lecture from our Icelandic Guest lecturer , on the volcanic eruption in Iceland in 2010 that crippled air traffic around Europe for a few months. The presentation was excellent, and as the lecturer is a geologist,  he gave a great insight into the volcanic activity past, present and future in Iceland.

He is also an accomplished photographer and was at the scene of the 2010 eruption several times. The images he captured were incredible.

After lunch, the Captain gave a presentation on the ship and then opened up for questions. Not surprisingly, there were a number of questions on tropical storm Hermine, which we are heading straight into. It seems that getting the ship to New York to get rid if us and pick up the next cruise passengers is the highest priority, and they could not risk a delay by going into Halifax, in case Hermine turned nasty.

We have been averaging 22 knots since we left St Johns which is flat out for this ship.

Current indications are that it will be a bit uncomfortable, but not life threatening.

The ship presentation was very interesting and he did it well.

Tuesday

In the early hours of the morning, the ship started to bump around a bit and we could hear the wind building.

By mid morning we were right in amongst it with winds peaking at 70 mph, but seas a relatively tame 4 to 5 metres. There is so much windage in these cruise ships that the wind is the major issue for the Captain rather than the seas.

Anyway, until mid morning we had a following sea and the wind behind us. That changed we turned west on our approach to New York, with still about 200 nm to go. The wind is now on the beam, and there is a lot of spray and a bit of rain. Naturally all of the pools are empty and all outside decks closed.

Te wind continued to build getting up to 80 mph, and whipping the seas up a bit more making it pretty miserable outside.

Looking back off our balcony

We should arrive in New York at around 5 am, now doing 12-13 knots.