And then there were Seas…

 As I mentioned earlier, soon after the students embarked, the sea sickness medication they so graciously rejected become less of a courtesy and more of necessity.  On day three of the voyage we were told we would experience our first day of rolling seas.  I had no idea what this meant.  Even if I knew what this meant, I don’t think I would have understood it, or how amazing the body’s ability to adapt to it really is.  Imagine you just got a new sports car.   You take it out for a spin on your first day to that perfect country road with tight turns, and rolling hills.  You zig through the turns, then, as you see the rolling hills approach you push the pedal to the floor, accelerating as fast as you can over the first bump, wahoooooooo, stomach up, stomach down, second hill, wahoooooooooo, stomach up, stomach down, third hill wahooooooooo, you get the picture.  That’s exactly what it felt like.  Constantly, going over rolling hills, in a fully accelerating car, over and over and over again, for 48 hours! You look out the windows of the ship and all you see is water, then all you see is sky, then all water, then all sky.  Its absolutely crazy. Its fun in a car, but try going to work with that going on, then, the fun part, try going to sleep!  When asked how bad of a day this was ‘motion’ wise on a scale of 1-10, one crew member responded probably a 2, ehh, maybe a 3, no, a 2.” Honestly when he said that I was scared.  My first thought was:  How can I do this for 16 more days through japan, then god knows how many days after that for the rest of the voyage.  My second thought was: are these crewmembers sick in the head? How can they live their lives like this, go to work like this every day, and above anything else, feel this damn discombobulated all the time?  A lot of people on board revisited what they had eaten for lunch that day. 

10 days later, when we hit real seas, I understood it.  Somehow, the body adapts.  Don’t get me wrong, it still feels a little funny, and watching people slamming into each other while walking down the hall never gets old, but your body just stops feeling it.  You look out the window and all you see is water, then all you see is sky, then all you see is water, then all you see is sky, but you just don’t feel it.   Nothing anyone could have said would have prepared me for the motion on this ship.  Because its far far smaller than any cruise ship I’d been on, it moves, and moves a lot!

After leaving Hawaii we were forced to divert almost 500 miles south to avoid a giant storm system sitting directly over our plotted course.  The captain made the decision to divert as far south as we possibly could, avoiding the center of the storm, cutting north as late as possible without running out of fuel before reaching Japan, sending us through the outer edge of the storm.  Day three of the voyage, our first day of rolling seas, there were 9-12 foot swells, while cutting through the edge of the storm we encountered 15-20 foot swells, at the heart of the storm, right on our plotted course, there were 55-60 foot swells! Thank you captain, something tells me, no matter how sturdy my sea legs, I would have felt that.