the Norwegian Coastal Voyage
Nov. 17th, 2004 04:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lprovenIntermission: seafaring
The Hurtigrute is a good choice of cruise for those who are not great sailors. Some prefer to sail because they do not like flying, but as many or more don't like to sail because of that old sailor's enemy: seasickness. Some of us get it, some don't. It is possible to beat it using willpower. Well, at least for some people - I managed. On one of my early crossings to the Isle of Man, at 13 or so, I was as sick as a dog, and not only was I extremely sorry for myself, I was deeply ashamed and annoyed as well. I'd sailed before without problems. So, knowing that I would be doing this trip a lot – cheap flights were nonexistent in the early '80s – I made sure that next time I kept myself as overstimulated as I could. I brought books and magazines, I brought music on a portable cassette recorder – no personal stereos in those days – I brought the state of the art in computer games, circa 1981: Pocket Simon. (I probably still have that somewhere; I daresay it's a collectors' item today.)
And, you know, it worked. I never got bored or tired and as I never had time to dwell on the motion of the ship, I didn't get sick - and I have been pretty much immune ever since.
This was put to the test once we made it to the north coast of Norway.
Normally, the Coastal Express hugs the shore fairly closely – indeed, even in wintertime, it moves carefully along a number of passages and fjords so narrow that the ship barely fits. This time-honoured method of travelling at sea means that the ship is protected from the worst of the weather out in the open sea, and the motion of the ship was never more than a gentle rocking.
Until now.
Although we're still not that far from land, up in this stretch there are no sheltering islands or convenient passages - the ship must stay some miles out and brave open water. Up here, though, the weather's harsher. We'd already seen thick fog and ice-cold driving rain. Offshore, it got worse. Much worse.
I braved a lap of the deck a few times. It's possible to get outside on the Polarlys on decks 5, 6 and 7 – and indeed deck 8 is, so to speak, the roof of the vessel.
I'm sure there's a special nautical word for this but I don't know what it is and don't care. I know port and starboard, bows or stem versus stern; I know I ought to call walls "bulkheads", windows "ports", doors "hatches", corridors "gangways" and toilets "heads", but frankly, I really can't be bothered. I've no idea what they are in Norwegian, to boot. It doesn't aid communication between landlubbers and sailors in any way - and what's more, not doing it has the added benefit of winding up yachty types.
Back to the ship. Only on deck 5 – two up from my cabin - can one complete a circuit. So I did.
It was pretty wild out there. The wind tends to hit one side or the other, leaving the other (quite possibly the "leeward") sheltered – and at the stern deck 6 has a walled alcove which usually blocks the worst of the weather. But on 5, when you round a corner, whammo!
I believe I allowed an inadvertent ejaculation of "whoa!" Possibly even "dude!" and perhaps an "awesome!" I blame the pernicious influence of American cultural imperialism.
The wind grabs hold of me with the mindless but implacable grasp of a baby and the strength of a giant. It did nothing with me: I don’t even have enough hair for it to muss. Still, I whooped and grabbed for a handhold. Exhilarating stuff. Go over the side in this, and even if they swooped straight back to get me I'd be dead of the cold in a minute or two. Assuming anyone noticed – for once, my metal bits might help. I wonder if I'd show up on radar?
At any rate, if nothing else, I feared for the safety of my spectacles, so I retreated towards dinner.
Inside, it was… lumpy. Very lumpy. Oddly, perhaps, I personally wasn't much affected. I've not made any long voyages in years, but I still make regular crossings on the Isle of Man Steam Packet on my annual pilgrimage to the TT Races - these days generally on a fast catamaran, akin to the fjord taxis we saw in Lofoten but substantially larger.
I find it odd that I was unbothered because I have inner-ear damage due to whiplash sustained in a motorcycle crash, years ago. My semicircular canals are pretty wrecked and I'm on my second sense of balance: since my ears can no longer reliably guide me, I've had to relearn how to stand, to walk and detect whether I'm level using my eyes. I need a visual horizon, but given that, I'm fine, as good as ever – I can ride a bicycle or motorcycle, walk along a narrow line, anything. In the dark, though, or without my glasses, I stumble and fall like a drunkard. Even when I'm not one.
I still go on fairground rides whenever I can – the big kid in me is alive and well – but if I overdo it, I quickly regret it. Nausea ensues in dramatic fashion.
So it struck me as strange that in these high seas – literally: the captain later told me the biggest waves went right over the bridge, fifteen metres above the waterline – I was untroubled. Dinner was sparsely attended to begin with, and as time went by, it got more so. The swell grew, the crowd of diners shrank. (Seconds of dessert! Hurrah!)
My meal was punctuated by grabbing for my beer to prevent it toppling, while from the cupboards and kitchen – or do I mean galley? – there issued loud and expensive-sounding crashes.
They're used to it; the waitresses grinned and trotted to and fro to keep selves and burdens upright. They didn't even notice the smaller crashes as things fell. Although the crew don't like to admit it, such passages are not uncommon up here in the north, depending on the season. It's not something to tell a tourist with trepidation enough to start with, though.
I must confess, though, that over conversation in the bar a few hours later, the stuffiness and smoke, together with the motion where I couldn't see out, did start to get to me and I began to feel a trifle green. A spin around the deck – hanging on to the rail for dear life – soon sorted me out, thought. By the time I'd returned, though, almost everyone had gone to bed. Only Geoff was left, a genial chap I'd got talking to on the way up to the glacier. He was enjoying his seventh holiday of the year - one of the perks of being a retired but vigorous 70-year-old bachelor, apparently. Can’t all be bad. But we decided that the better part of valour is discretion, and went off to our cabins too.
The next day was somewhat calmer. Now the crew at reception started giving out free seasickness pills. I heard many moans and complaints of "I'm never going on a cruise again", but I think these are worth about as much as statements of intent to never drink again. For their sake, one can but hope.
The Hurtigrute is a good choice of cruise for those who are not great sailors. Some prefer to sail because they do not like flying, but as many or more don't like to sail because of that old sailor's enemy: seasickness. Some of us get it, some don't. It is possible to beat it using willpower. Well, at least for some people - I managed. On one of my early crossings to the Isle of Man, at 13 or so, I was as sick as a dog, and not only was I extremely sorry for myself, I was deeply ashamed and annoyed as well. I'd sailed before without problems. So, knowing that I would be doing this trip a lot – cheap flights were nonexistent in the early '80s – I made sure that next time I kept myself as overstimulated as I could. I brought books and magazines, I brought music on a portable cassette recorder – no personal stereos in those days – I brought the state of the art in computer games, circa 1981: Pocket Simon. (I probably still have that somewhere; I daresay it's a collectors' item today.)
And, you know, it worked. I never got bored or tired and as I never had time to dwell on the motion of the ship, I didn't get sick - and I have been pretty much immune ever since.
This was put to the test once we made it to the north coast of Norway.
Normally, the Coastal Express hugs the shore fairly closely – indeed, even in wintertime, it moves carefully along a number of passages and fjords so narrow that the ship barely fits. This time-honoured method of travelling at sea means that the ship is protected from the worst of the weather out in the open sea, and the motion of the ship was never more than a gentle rocking.
Until now.
Although we're still not that far from land, up in this stretch there are no sheltering islands or convenient passages - the ship must stay some miles out and brave open water. Up here, though, the weather's harsher. We'd already seen thick fog and ice-cold driving rain. Offshore, it got worse. Much worse.
I braved a lap of the deck a few times. It's possible to get outside on the Polarlys on decks 5, 6 and 7 – and indeed deck 8 is, so to speak, the roof of the vessel.
I'm sure there's a special nautical word for this but I don't know what it is and don't care. I know port and starboard, bows or stem versus stern; I know I ought to call walls "bulkheads", windows "ports", doors "hatches", corridors "gangways" and toilets "heads", but frankly, I really can't be bothered. I've no idea what they are in Norwegian, to boot. It doesn't aid communication between landlubbers and sailors in any way - and what's more, not doing it has the added benefit of winding up yachty types.
Back to the ship. Only on deck 5 – two up from my cabin - can one complete a circuit. So I did.
It was pretty wild out there. The wind tends to hit one side or the other, leaving the other (quite possibly the "leeward") sheltered – and at the stern deck 6 has a walled alcove which usually blocks the worst of the weather. But on 5, when you round a corner, whammo!
I believe I allowed an inadvertent ejaculation of "whoa!" Possibly even "dude!" and perhaps an "awesome!" I blame the pernicious influence of American cultural imperialism.
The wind grabs hold of me with the mindless but implacable grasp of a baby and the strength of a giant. It did nothing with me: I don’t even have enough hair for it to muss. Still, I whooped and grabbed for a handhold. Exhilarating stuff. Go over the side in this, and even if they swooped straight back to get me I'd be dead of the cold in a minute or two. Assuming anyone noticed – for once, my metal bits might help. I wonder if I'd show up on radar?
At any rate, if nothing else, I feared for the safety of my spectacles, so I retreated towards dinner.
Inside, it was… lumpy. Very lumpy. Oddly, perhaps, I personally wasn't much affected. I've not made any long voyages in years, but I still make regular crossings on the Isle of Man Steam Packet on my annual pilgrimage to the TT Races - these days generally on a fast catamaran, akin to the fjord taxis we saw in Lofoten but substantially larger.
I find it odd that I was unbothered because I have inner-ear damage due to whiplash sustained in a motorcycle crash, years ago. My semicircular canals are pretty wrecked and I'm on my second sense of balance: since my ears can no longer reliably guide me, I've had to relearn how to stand, to walk and detect whether I'm level using my eyes. I need a visual horizon, but given that, I'm fine, as good as ever – I can ride a bicycle or motorcycle, walk along a narrow line, anything. In the dark, though, or without my glasses, I stumble and fall like a drunkard. Even when I'm not one.
I still go on fairground rides whenever I can – the big kid in me is alive and well – but if I overdo it, I quickly regret it. Nausea ensues in dramatic fashion.
So it struck me as strange that in these high seas – literally: the captain later told me the biggest waves went right over the bridge, fifteen metres above the waterline – I was untroubled. Dinner was sparsely attended to begin with, and as time went by, it got more so. The swell grew, the crowd of diners shrank. (Seconds of dessert! Hurrah!)
My meal was punctuated by grabbing for my beer to prevent it toppling, while from the cupboards and kitchen – or do I mean galley? – there issued loud and expensive-sounding crashes.
They're used to it; the waitresses grinned and trotted to and fro to keep selves and burdens upright. They didn't even notice the smaller crashes as things fell. Although the crew don't like to admit it, such passages are not uncommon up here in the north, depending on the season. It's not something to tell a tourist with trepidation enough to start with, though.
I must confess, though, that over conversation in the bar a few hours later, the stuffiness and smoke, together with the motion where I couldn't see out, did start to get to me and I began to feel a trifle green. A spin around the deck – hanging on to the rail for dear life – soon sorted me out, thought. By the time I'd returned, though, almost everyone had gone to bed. Only Geoff was left, a genial chap I'd got talking to on the way up to the glacier. He was enjoying his seventh holiday of the year - one of the perks of being a retired but vigorous 70-year-old bachelor, apparently. Can’t all be bad. But we decided that the better part of valour is discretion, and went off to our cabins too.
The next day was somewhat calmer. Now the crew at reception started giving out free seasickness pills. I heard many moans and complaints of "I'm never going on a cruise again", but I think these are worth about as much as statements of intent to never drink again. For their sake, one can but hope.
