Cruising at High Speed

Today will be our 4th port day in a row: Naples, Italy; Rome, Italy; Cannes, France; and now Barcelona, Spain.

There are two issues with this. First is that it is tiring. Since you only have 6 to 8 hours in each port (once you have gotten from the port into the city), you want to keep a busy schedule. This is challenging to do for four days in a row.

The second unobvious issue is that it means the ship has a lot of distance to cover...not so much on the night from Naples to Rome, but definitely on last night and the night before. That means the ship travels at its upper speed of 17-20 knots, rather than at 8-13 knots.

In practical terms this means that for any given roughness of the sea, the effects are substantially amplified at the higher speed. The ship may choose to go a little bit faster than typical during the evening and the morning when passengers are up and about, but at night, when the passengers should be in bed, the ship cranks the speed up to maximum.

Since we are in the very front of the ship, we really feel it when the ship is pitching (forward to backward rocking). Last night and the night before we had sufficient pitching during the high-speed night run that we had dried salt spray coating our forward-looking balcony glass doors each morning. We were awakened during each night at least once to the movement and the slamming sound of the front of the ship against some waves. Last night we had to wedge a towel into the drawers in one of the cabinet in order to stop the clicking of the drawers against the door facing as the rocking was enough to move the drawers out.

Last night we transited the Gulf of Lions, the region of the Mediterranean between France and Spain, that is known for high winds and rough seas.

Of course, neither of these two issues are horrible, just unobvious aspects of this type of cruise agenda. All other things being equal, the impact of the ship’s pitching from the rough seas can be minimized if you select a cabin towards the center of the ship.