It’s now Mother’s Day aboard the Diamond Princess and our second day of an 8 day sea journey across the North Pacific Ocean enroute to Whittier, Alaska. It’s Sunday 12 May, 2013. Since leaving Yokohama our slight seas have changed to Moderate Seas (about a 2 metre swell) with winds of 36 knots gusting to 42 knots. Temperature on deck (not that we’ve been up there of late) is a chilly 3 degrees Celcius (33 F). The gusty winds have kicked up a lot of sea spray and our balcony is wet. We have the glass doors closed as the water from the sea spray runs down the outside.

The boat has been rocking and rolling a little which makes it easy to get to sleep. The downside is you keep swaying with the roll when standing which is natural as the body compensates for the movement. However, while you don’t notice it aboard the ship when you reach land you continue to sway instead of standing still. They refer to this as still having your ‘sea legs’.

The motion may be sufficient to make some sea sick (particularly those very susceptible to travel sickness) but not for most people. The beauty of these modern ships is the ‘stabilisers’ that work to keep the ship steady in a rolling sea. These ‘stabilisers’ are like aeroplane wings below the water that extend for some 4-5 metres at the sides of the ship. Two located towards the front and two towards the back of the ship. These ‘stabilisers’ then gyrate as the ship moves through the water controlled by a computer to keep the ship stable in heavy seas minimising the potential for passengers to become seasick. When you consider many passengers are in their senior years this is crucial to keeping the passengers happy and healthy.

Each day of the journey we continue to put the clock forward and hour and as we cross the Dateline we do one day twice. Don’t know how the crew’s time sheets go on this day or whether they have to work 2 days for the price of one? The sunsets are also getting later each evening with the sun setting at 8pm. By the time we hit Alaska sunset is around 11pm but in reality it never sets as you have what they refer to as a ‘white’ night. So you can walk around at 2am and it looks the same as 10am. So you have to create your own artificial night by closing the curtains when you go to bed.

Lot’s of things to do onboard the ship, one is the ice carving demo upstairs on deck:

It’s almost 4pm here (and 5pm somewhere) so time to open the minibar.

Paul