A very big ship - Stories from the cruise

 The size of modern-day cruise ships is staggering. Standing on the dock, looking up at these behemoths leaves one speechless. We sailed the Inner Passage on the Golden Princess, a modest-sized vessel of 109,000 gross tons that carries 2,600 passengers plus 1,100 crew members. I say modest because there are 48 active ships larger than the Golden Princess. The largest ships are the Royal Caribbean Allure of the Seas, and her sister ship, Oasis of the Seas, weighing in at 225,282 gross tons. Each carries 6,296 passengers and crew!

The Golden Princess is 951 feet long, beam of 159 feet. From waterline, this boat is 18 stories (decks) tall, with 4 floors in the "basement." One would think that this massive superstructure would result in a significant draft below the waterline. I was surprised to find it was only 29 feet. The aircraft carrier USS Lexington, by comparison, is only 833 feet long and weighs 36,380 tons

Embarking on a cruise is much like embarking on a plane trip; arrive at a jam-packed terminal building, check your luggage, present your documents (one of which swears that you are not at the present time, nor have you recently been ill), proceed through security on your way to the boarding gate. About the only difference is that you are photographed and your photo is tied to your key card (door key, ID and on-board charge card)..

We opted for a room with a private balcony, but privacy is a relative term. If you sneeze, neighbors from two rooms on either side of you and from above and below you say, "Bless You." And from our vantage point on the 12th deck, we could look over the rail and see into about 100 other balconies.We had a group of Japanese on one side of us, and two couples of Mid-Westerners on the other.  Not sure about their sleeping arrangements; those rooms were the same size as ours. Maybe they just had a lot of friends visiting.All of the time.

We sailed from Seattle on a beautiful afternoon, and enjoyed being "top side" for a long time. Finally returned to our room to find all our luggage had been faithfully delivered and met our wonderful room steward Mac. Got unpacked, went to the buffet for a meal and settled in for the evening.

During the night, the winds picked up, we moved out into the open waters of the Pacific, and the ship began a little rocking and rolling. It felt like being in an airplane in a really bumpy stretch, and you kept expecting the captain to turn on the seat belt sign. If we had been wearing those new motion sensing bracelets, we would have racked up the miles while seated!

Lying in bed, it felt like someone had their foot on the bed, jostling it repeatedly - a feeling similar to an earthquake we experienced in Mexico City once. From time to time, it felt like the ship was going over a speed bump!

The next morning was even worse. For folks that already stagger a bit, making our way to breakfast was an adventure. There are rails almost everywhere, thankfully, so we clung tightly and pulled ourselves along.

On deck, all the water in the swimming pools was sloshing over their sides. In the inner part of the ship, the creaking and groaning of the walls and bulkheads sounded like the soundtrack of a movie about wooden sailing ships on the high seas. We met a lot of green-faced individuals along the way.

 We had motion sickness medicine with us, both the Scopolamine patches and the meclazine tablets, but neither of us felt sea-sick, and I'm pretty sure we can say after that day's sailing we never will be. The TV said we were experiencing "mild" seas, winds at 33 knots (38 mph). Later the Captain talked about the 50 knot winds (58 mph) that delayed our arrival into Juneau. We heard a crew member say "that was the worst he had ever experienced!" Here's a little video from that experience:

Fortunately, by evening, things were much calmer, and from that point we had nothing but calm seas.

Next: living the good life, in Part II