Her Name Was Lola - October 29

The sea was angry that day, my friends.

                            — George Costanza

There had been a few announcements yesterday evening, warning us that it was going to get bad, and explaining that there was no way to avoid the bad weather. It was, said the Captain, the “remnants” of Cyclone Lola, and we had to go through it to get to New Zealand. If you want to know the difference between a cyclone, a typhoon, and a hurricane, click here: Difference between cyclone and hurricane 

By the time we went to bed last night, it was starting to get very bumpy - so bumpy you just wanted to get into bed as fast as you could. It was too hard to walk or stand or try to put things away.

When we woke up this morning, the water was furious; the waves were heaving and churning. 

Normally the drapes are back against the wall, but every time the ship rolled, the drapes would swing out several inches. In other words, the drapes remained vertical when the walls tilted.

We are up high, so it’s hard to get a good sense of the scale of these waves.
The Captain later said 6.5 meters (about 20 feet).

Surprisingly, I didn’t feel nauseous, but I did feel uncomfortable and unbalanced. It was hard to do anything in our cabin. Because we were on the aft and on a fairly high deck, the motion was more extreme in our cabin than in other parts of the ship. Our best strategy was to leave the cabin ASAP and hunker down nearer to the center of the ship on Deck 6 or 7. 

We went to breakfast (no problem eating 😋) and then I went to Knitters and Knatters, where we talked about all the different times we had been on cruises during hurricanes and typhoons and we gamed out all the possible new itineraries that might be announced. 

Originally we were scheduled to dock in Auckland on October 30, in Tauranga on October 31, and in Bay of Islands on November 1. A woman who lived in Tauranga thought we would skip Auckland and go straight to Tauranga, where the storm was not so bad. Most of us thought the ship would make every effort to stop in Auckland, because it was a turnaround port. At a turnaround port passengers end or begin a cruise. In this case, 750 passengers were to disembark at Auckland, and 800 were to join the ship. That’s about 25% of the passengers.

Not too much later, more details were announced:

• The Port of Auckland was currently closed. 
• We would proceed to a sheltered anchorage near Auckland, arriving there some time after midnight tonight, and we would anchor there until the port reopened and we were permitted to dock. 

We decided to spend some time in the Concierge Lounge because it was closer to the center of the ship. I thought it would be a nice quiet place to read. Not so much.

Darko was rushing about, getting ready for the Ocean Theme Party this evening. When we experienced an especially strong wave, I heard the sound of shattering glassware. Darko peeked inside one of the glassware cabinets and I could see glittering shards of martini glasses and other cocktail glasses on the floor of the cabinet. He closed the door very quickly. I don’t think he wanted me to see it. And he certainly didn’t want to risk any glasses falling out. He called someone and asked them to send some of the bar staff up to help.

I decided it was a good time to leave and give Darko and the staff some privacy to clean up the mess. Besides, I had to go back to our room and put on something blue or aqua, in keeping with the ocean theme of the party. As if we needed to be reminded about the ocean.

A short digression to provide context for the next event: One or two nights ago, we heard a comedian tell a story about dropping a big bottle of shampoo while in the shower, making a loud crash. About a minute later his wife sticks her head in the door and asks if he is ok. He says to her that she is 58 seconds too late. That was the joke. It’s not important whether it is funny or not.

Back to the storm: When I got back to our room, Ken says he is  going to take a shower. He starts the shower. A big wave hits the ship. I hear a big crash in the bathroom. 

I wasn’t going to see if Ken was ok because he usually gets annoyed by that type of thing. Then I remembered the joke, so, as a joke, I rushed over to the bathroom and stuck my head in and asked if he was ok. He was ok, but it was a near miss and  he was in shock. The wave had caused the ship to lurch suddenly, and Ken was thrown against the shower door. The door opened and he slid completely out of the shower, managing to stop himself with his hands against the counter by the sink.

We made it to Darko’s Ocean Theme Party. All the glass had been cleaned up, and you never would have known anything happened. The blue-themed party was a lot of fun. Here’s a cute video Darko made of us - 7 seconds:

These are the blue drinks the bartenders concocted

At dinner, the dining room was much emptier than usual. Even some of the waitstaff were out sick. After dinner we went to the theater because it was better than going to our room, The theater was only about 20% full. The show turned out to be good - we saw a “vocal impressionist” named Tricia Kelly. She was a good singer and did a good job imitating famous singers.

Finally, we went back to our room and jumped into bed as quickly as possible. Somehow I fell asleep, though I woke up several times during the night. The wind continued to blow and the boat rocked, even after we anchored in the sheltered cove.

Today’s fabric is Fall Fantasy Flannels Storm, by Moda.