Sea Legs 🌊

Rough. It is the only word I can think of to describe today’s first day at sea; one of three I would like to add! There are mixed faces onboard Ventura at the beginning of her voyage to the Canary Islands – smiley, friendly and… green!

My stomach churns as I write this blog. In my three years at sea, I have never experienced waves like today’s. 6 to 7 metre-high swells lash and crash into the ship’s walls. Closely followed by the occasional shudder – I always think to myself, ‘Have we just hit a whale?!’.

The waves have been roaring since around 2am this morning. Luckily, I manged to sleep through most of it. My body clock did wake me up at 5am, however I slowly drifted back to sleep until my mobile played its famous morning bells. What I would give to be ‘slowly drifting’ now. Add a ray of sunshine too! Aaaahhh.

Just when you think the sea has calmed down, it hits you again with that rolling-stomach feeling; the one you usually get on a rollercoaster ride for a couple of seconds, except this feeling lasts all day! Round we go, up and over a couple of times with splashing sounds filling my portholes. A couple of times, a faint echo of worry came from the atrium too as the ship sailed into a ‘big one!’.

I lasted until around 3:30pm when I decided the best option would be to take some sea sickness tablets. I guess they did work; eating helped too. (No problem with that! 🤣)

Today, I think I found a whole new take on what it is like to have ‘sea legs’…

It’s all part of what makes working at sea so great, varied and fun!