20230924 Sunday, September 24, 2023; Day 2- At Sea, Into the Storm
The ship passed through the Salish Sea last night, cruising between Pender and Stuart Islands, and then down the Strait of Juan de Fuca in the dead of the night. We awoke to mild rocking as the ship headed down the Washington coast about 50 NM off shore. The winds were 25-30mph and the seas were moderate with white caps and 3-5’ swells. We headed down for a leisurely breakfast in the Michelangelo Dining room. We are electing to dine as a couple mostly to reduce the time that it takes to get the table served, but it’s a trade-off if there’s no 2 tops open at the time you show up at the door.
Janet is eager to get our entries in for the Wake Show drawings for prizes. The Wake Show is a daily program put on by the cruise entertainment staff, and they have a daily question. Today’s was how long has Claire been on the ship. Our cruise director is Karen from the UK and Claire is from Scotland. Claire boarded the ship 2 weeks ago in Vancouver. However, the ship seems to be low on supplies because the usual submission slips for the Wake Show entries were nowhere to be seen.
We did manage to get some details sorted regarding switching our internet connection between devices and using our beverage package. On this current iteration of the MedallionNet, you don’t log out of your device. You log in on the device you want to use, and that disconnects any other devices automatically. If you try to manually type in logout.com, it takes you to a pirated website with expired certificates on the real internet.
Janet managed the first trivia quiz of this cruise on her own as Ben went up to the room to put on some scopolamine gel. Clive from South Africa hosted the event called Let’s Get Quizzical. Ben ended up showing up as they were going over the answers. Since the Covid Pandemic, they have done away with trading papers for grading, so it’s all on the honor system. Janet scored 17/20 which tied for best score. Instead of a sudden death run off question, they handed out an Onboard Activities Prize Point card to each of the 3 teams that had the best score. It looks like these will be collected like carnival tickets and exchanged for prizes on the last day of the cruise.
Ben tried to get up to the forward observation deck to video sea conditions but that area is all roped off. The winds are probably too much for safety. It is possible to look forward through the fitness center windows, but you can’t really appreciate the sea conditions from that angle. The fitness center was jam packed. Oddly, there is only a very modest scale, barely large enough to step on, by the fitness center door, and it is only calibrated in Stones and Kg.
We did the Flags of the World trivia and got beat out by one team by one point. This quiz included a nautical alphabet flag, diving flag and historical monocolor flag. Did you know that from 1977 to 2011 Libya’s flag was a solid green flag? We also discovered that from 1996 to 1997 Afghanistan’s official flag was the white flag. I always thought that was a joke. That would also have been France’s flag from 1939-1945 Ha Ha.
We grazed the International Cafe and pool deck venues for lunch. The “Slices” venue does make a very good thin crust pizza. However, Alfredo’s, which is in the Piazza has changed from an included casual restaurant to a premium casual fare with cover charge, like a Specialty restaurant but with a $15 per person charge. If you upgrade to Princess Premium, you can dine at two of the Casual dining options for free. Our old Plus fare doesn’t include that, so that’s another place off limits to us on this cruise that was open before these most recent Princess changes.
As the day progressed, so did the winds and seas. By 1pm the winds were 35mph and the seas were whipped up into 6-8’ swells and white caps with some blowing froth. The ship was also wobbling a bit more, although the stabilizers helped minimize rolling.
Our complaints regarding the Elite bath products etc yielded robes, slippers, chap stick, Q-tips, emory boards, shower cap and sleep masks, so it doesn’t hurt to complain.
We did afternoon tea because there’s always an excuse to be eating and drinking on a cruise ship. While the tea and service are great, the scones have taken a dive for the worse. In the British Baking Show, they would say they were claggy and thoroughly uninspired. For some reason, the baked goods on this ship haven’t been quite up to our prior experiences on the Princess cruise line. Perhaps the bakers were another casualty of the Covid Pandemic.
We hit the gym in the early afternoon which is a much less crowded time than in the early morning. It was a challenge running on the treadmills with the ship’s rocking and pitching. I had to keep a hand on the rail to keep from stumbling when the ship lurched in its various directions.
The ship’s internet is driven by Starlink technology. Every week, we try to Zoom with our kids on Sundays. We were barely able to do so with the ship’s internet. We had to turn off our video to conserve bandwidth, but it was good to stay in touch with our kids and their lives, even being 50 miles off shore in the midst of a storm.
By early evening, the winds were up to 50+kts with gusts in the 60+kt range. In nautical terms, we were facing Beaufort 10 conditions. The ship is managing 10-12 kts headway with manageable roll, but shudders periodically when it crashes into some of the 15-20’ waves. The outdoors decks and promenade are closed for safety and all poolside deck chairs have been strapped down to avoid being Instagram’s or YouTube’s next viral video. The cruise director announced overhead that the evening’s stage production of the British Invasion, a tribute to British rock bands, was canceled due to the severe sea conditions. We wouldn’t want to see any of the dancers or singers get injured by falling props or affects equipment, and it’s hard enough to dance on a stage that’s not lurching about constantly.
80’s music trivia was fun but we were a long way from winning that. We were able to get dinner in the Botticelli dining room on a standby basis even though reservations were not available online. This dining room is at the back of the ship so the waiters had to contend with a lot of the ship’s pitching. As we headed back to our stateroom after dinner, we discovered that one of the windows on the Promenade deck had been ruptured by spray or a pressure wave. Fortunately, no-one was injured.
Since the production show was cancelled, we watched the on-demand movies in our stateroom, taking in John Wick 4 from the comfort of our bed while the ship rocked and lurched in the storm. The Barbie movie has not yet made it to Princess.
