During the night we woke several times as the wind had got up and large waves were crashing off the side of the Adonia, and we could feel our beds shaking. When we got up it was quite difficult moving around our cabin due to the ship’s motion. Not to worry though; sea-sickness has never affected us, no matter what the weather, so we were looking forward to another relaxing day at sea.
After breakfast we went along to hear another talk by the P & O marine historian Rob Henderson; this time it was about several of the great ships of the Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Company and their roles during the war. Afterwards we went along to the Conservatory to enjoy a mid-morning coffee, and we saw Charlie and Linda who were looking slightly worse for wear due to the rough weather and, they said, maybe a tad too many of the cocktails of the day. 🙂 We advised them to consume some form of ginger (ginger beer, ginger ale etc.) as we have always found ginger to be excellent for relieving nausea; indeed on the QE2 in the past they always used to set out bowls of crystallised ginger for the passengers to help themselves to whenever the going was a little rough.
We decided to venture out onto the deserted pool deck and were nearly blown off our feet by the strong wind, which was very cold. All around us the Irish Sea crashed and foamed with large, choppy waves. We sought refuge inside once again and pottered about the ship until lunchtime.
The mid-day announcement informed us that the wind was Force 8 on the Beaufort scale, which was gale force and, as ever, advised us to “take care” when moving around the ship due to the high seas.
At 1.00pm we went along to the Crow’s Nest for the second round of “Battle of the Sexes” and the picture round consisted of famous landmarks, followed by a general knowledge round. When you are part of a large team there is a lot of conferring going on, and often someone on the team will offer the correct answer but then allow themselves to be talked out of it by the other team members; this happened quite a lot to us. Also, it’s the luck of the draw which questions you get; sometimes we knew the answers to the opposition’s questions but not our own. It’s all part of the fun though. Once again, the ladies lost by five points, so we are now lagging behind 10 points overall. 🙁
Charlie and Linda had joined in with the quiz and had taken our advice and got a ginger-beer based drink, but it didn’t do them any good and, in fact, they both left in rather a hurry to seek the comfort of their cabin.
We stayed for the “Name that Tune” round and had another drink, then it was back to our cabin for an afternoon nap, as we hadn’t slept well last night. Another annoucement from the bridge advised us that the storm had increased and now the wind was up to Force 9 (strong gale). Indeed some of the doors leading to the open decks had been roped off, saying the the deck was “closed” and advising passengers not to go outside.
Around teatime we spotted “land ahoy” and, looking at the map, saw that we were going through the Hebrides. In the distance we could see the islands of Lewis and Harris to our port side and some of the inner islands, such as Skye, to our starboard side.
We enjoyed a hearty dinner at 6.15pm and noticed that the sea was calmer. The captain had advised that, by about midnight tonight, the wind should have dropped and we had a good forecast for our arrival into Scrabster tomorrow morning.
In the Curzon Lounge tonight’s entertainment was a pianist. He was very good and played a selection of contemporary and classical pieces, including one of my favourites, the fantastic Warsaw Concerto by Richard Addinsell. He ended his concert by asking the audience to shout out some of their favourite piano pieces (I asked for Debussy’s Clair de Lune) which he then played in a medley. We really enjoyed his performance and some people got to their feet while applauding.
We met up with Charlie and Linda once again in the Crow’s Nest, by which time they’d perked up considerably. We played the “Majority Rules” quiz, which is a bit different in that there is no right and wrong answer to each question, but you score more points the more teams that have the same answer as you. We didn’t win, but it was amusing to see some of the answers people had suggested.
Then it was off to bed again in cabin B117 where we noticed from our balcony that there were not as many “white horses” on the sea, so we hoped for a much calmer night.