Day 1 - Hurricane Olda

Sunday was a fun day . . . We now know that when we left Southampton the Captain knew we were sailing into a Gale, but the gale escallated into a full blown Hurricane which has a name now, hurricane Olda. At one point, we had 4 hours of sustained 111kts wind (127MPH) and gusting to 148kts (170MPH). The beaufort wind scale stops at 12 after 60kts and is classed as a hurricane. So I think at double sustained hurricane wind speeds, and almost triple gusts, we have earned our sea legs now. The ship was down to around 4kts for much of the night due to the very strong headwinds and rough seas. We did very little all Sunday and the wind remained at force 12 all day with very violent bursts of wind and motion. We made up for lost sleep on Saturday night a little, but doing anything that involved concentration and working against the ship movement was quite exhausting to be honest. At least we weren’t ill at all unlike a large number of passengers and crew.

The open decks on 7 and 13 have been closed since lat Saturday night with no plans to re-open until we are out of the storm.

It’ll show how bad it was, they even cancelled the bingo !!!

Sunday was lobster and beef Wellington night and would have been the first optional formal night, but due to the weather wasn’t billed as such and I expect they had a lot of lobster left judging by how many people stayed in their cabins on Sunday.