Hurricane Noel, Steve and Carol

Dateline: Saragossa Sea, 51 Miles east of Florida
300 Miles West of Hurricane Noel’s Eye, 1305 hours

This will be our last blog from sea. We were going to wait on this until we got back to land, but Hurricane Noel has changed our plans. Take a look at the Picasa photos and the Video link at the seas we are passing through to see what we mean.

The Captain has the con, and has given two updates already today, as a lot of people are seasick, and some are freaked out. As we suspected yesterday, he reported we are 300 miles due west of the eye of the storm, some 50 miles off the east coast of Florida. We awoke this morning to a corkscrewing ship that has been moving up and down some 30-feet in each direction. We are getting hit with 20-foot seas and winds of up to 35 knots from right behind the ship (which is the worst place to get high winds from), and this is 300 MILES away from the hurricane’s most-destructive power! However, it sounds like the people to the north and northwest of the storm’s center are getting pounded the worst. As usual for us, we got out of Dodge just in the nick of time. All of the places we have visited since Monday are in for quite a beating tonight and tomorrow, and they have been issuing alerts for a lot of the East Coast airports on the ship. Quite an experience for a couple of land lubbers like us. Anyway, because it is most difficult to walk along the decks and impossible to jog on them at this point, we decided to get a couple of lattes and hit the Internet lounge and finish the at sea portion of our stories. We will then adjourn to the inside Sun deck for some reading time.

Here is a video of the force of the sea:


As it was rough last night after dinner, we stayed in the room and enjoyed the seas from the balcony. It was a nice night for a glass of Jack (or wine for Carol) and one of Steve’s Cuban cigars. With the patches and two weeks acclimation, the seas are not bothering us at all.

We got dressed and headed out for Jimmy (NOTHING keeps Steve away from Jimmy!), and Squeaky Deck (see earlier blog) BE JAMMIN’ BIG TIME. In fact, it is interesting to lay in bed at night and just listen to the ship flex. Steel, artwork, furniture, stairways, everything moves and groans, squeaks, pops or in some other way let’s us know the stresses hitting this big object. We cannot imagine what it was like for those people coming across the Atlantic in 100-foot ships. In fact, while we were eating breakfast, we were talking with a crew dog who came across with this ship from England about a month and a half ago, and was in that same storm we wrote about the other day. He said at that time all of the deck chairs and tables were being thrown all across the decks, and that he was actually scared. Nothing close to that here.

Well, until we hit land this is the last update for us. Please enjoy all of the photos and movies. It has been a wonderful 16 days and we are sort of sad to leave the ship, but we have a lot of adventures to come along, so stay with us!