Well, what a complete waste of a day today turned out to be! During the night I woke up several times and I could hear the wind howling and the waves crashing against the hull of the Adonia below our balcony. After 32 cruises, we are used to feeling the motion of the ship when in bed, and indeed sometimes the gentle rocking is quite soporific, but here in cabin B117 the bed seemed to move independently from the rest of the cabin. Imagine a table with one leg slightly shorter than the others, where you have to put a piece of folded-up cardboard under the table leg to level it off, and you’ll get the idea of how the bed moved. It was constant, but rocked side to side more noticeably when the sea was rough, and it got rather tiresome very quickly.
So at 4.00am I found myself wide-awake in my shaking bed with some very ominous rumblings and churnings going on in my stomach. I turned over and tried to make myself more comfortable but to no avail. In the end, it was a dash to the loo where I shall spare you the details; I put it down to something dodgy I’d eaten the night before. 🙁
After dozing on and off, the grey light of dawn crept into our cabin and the scene outside was dismal; a choppy, restless Irish Sea, the rain pouring down and the lighthouse of Douglas, Isle of Man, beyond, where we were supposed to drop anchor around 8.00am.
The captain’s voice boomed over the tannoy to advise us that, as always, he has to put the safety of the ship’s passengers and crew above all else, and so he regretted to inform us that it would be too unsafe to try to anchor and ferry passengers ashore in the tenders. He explained that the Force 9 gales were worse than they’d forecast and it wouldn’t be safe to land; he was going to stay in contact with the harbour master in Douglas to let us know if there were any updates.
In the meantime, the Adonia continued to circle slowly in the foaming water, with the lights of the shore just annoyingly out of reach. So near, and yet so far. It was quite a disappointment as we’d never been to the Isle of Man before and were especially looking forward to visiting this interesting and unusual island.
As it happened, I was too sick to have been able to go anyway. I just stayed in the cabin and drank plenty of water and some ginger ale, and hoped the sickness and nausea would pass.
After lunch, Trevor came back and said that he’d seen Charlie and Linda who had said that I had to get myself better for the “Name that Tune” quiz at 4.30pm, as they needed my expertise in 70’s and 80’s music. 🙂
By three o’clock I was feeling a bit better, so I got out of bed and got showered and dressed. By this time the Adonia had set her course for our next port of call Holyhead in Wales. We should not have been arriving until tomorrow morning, but due to the inclement weather they were seeking the shelter of the Welsh port at 6.00pm tonight, and remaining moored up overnight. As the old saying goes, “any port in a storm.” 🙂
Up in the Crow’s Nest for the quiz, we had a full team and got 14 out of 15 questions correct, as did another team. It therefore went to the tie-breaker where we correctly guessed that the disco song “Hot Stuff” was released in 1979. So we won some more gold stickers for our prize card. 🙂
When the quiz-master noticed the name of our team “Missing Man”, he said, “oh, is someone missing from your team then?” I said “no, it’s because we’re ‘missing Man’ as in ‘Isle of…’ “. This created lots of laughter in the room, and I thought I was appropriate for today’s blog title. 🙂
I didn’t go down to dinner tonight as my stomach still wasn’t feeling 100%. I only joined our table towards the end where I managed a bowl of soup and a couple of pieces of cheese; the first food across my lips today. Oh well, it’s one way to lose some weight I suppose!
After dinner I just went back to the cabin and went back to bed. Trevor watched the show and took part in the Syndicate Quiz, but I just wanted to make up for the lost sleep of the night before. By this time we were docked in Holyhead, Anglesey, and the night was nice and quiet and best of all, no shaking bed! Hopefully I – and the weather – would be a lot better tomorrow. 🙂