Easter Sunday, 23 March 2008, Aurora, at Sea

We passed south of Sicily during the night, north of Tunisia at breakfast – there was a low shadow along the starboard horizon that was definitely land. Minorca is somewhere ahead, and we’re to hit the pilot station off Barcelona at 0645 tomorrow morning.

I won’t say that the ship is leaping about like a wild thing, but she is definitely feeling the weather more than at any other point in the voyage. I was on deck at 0700, just in time to catch the sunrise, and when I opened the door to the outside air, the pressure of the wind was almost too much for me.

Only a few doughty souls treading the measured mile around the Promenade Deck. Obviously it had rained in the night, the wind was fierce, and the waves were high. I climbed up to the Pennant Bar, got a cup of tea and a hot cross bun from the Orangery, and sat waiting for the sun.

Too much haze and low cloud for the green flash – my secret hope – but I got to see the sun’s orange ball lift clear, making a brief glow over  the troubled ocean. The wind flipped pink spray from the wave crests, a thousand white horses racing along beside us, the waves surging up in a robust fashion.

Back inside to collect a drowsy wife for breakfast. Hopes of easter eggs dashed – none shipped at Southampton and none choppered in since.

Breakfast with a cheerful group, including our two friends from Melbourne. I was sure I had them pegged – two men travelling together, not that there’s anything wrong with that – but they made sure we knew that they were just two widowers seeing the world and sharing a cabin. We tend to get on better with the Australians on board. The British folk are almost uniformly charming, but there’s still that cultural difference. Their politics, their television shows, their celebrities – all subtly different to ours.

After breakfast, I investigated the laundry. Quite a load to go, especially considering the clothes that got rained through in Athens. But my luck continued and I sailed through with barely a five minute wait for a drier.

Kerri went up to the Crows Nest while I toiled in the laundry, but she came back down, slightly green, before I was done. The Captain made an announcement that he’d closed off the outer areas while the wind continued, and Kerri reported that the Crows Nest, on Deck 13 above the bow, was bouncing about in far too uncontrolled a fashion for her taste.

I spent a fair amount of morning time looking out on the sea. From our low midships cabin, the motion isn’t too bad, but the sight of the waves meeting the foaming wake and surging up to the level of our window is endlessly fascinating. At least for me.

Lunch was spent with some more of those delightful British. One couple were sitting at their regular dinner table, and their regular waiter, an Indian with the unlikely name of Gilbert, was all smiles. I’ve noted him before – he looks like a movie star and obviously takes a great deal of pleasure in his work. Not that our own dinner waiters – Joe and Frazer, another couple of traditional Indian names – are anything but superb, but Gilbert is a standout.

The afternoon was rough, and it seems I’m a better sailor than my ex naval officer wife. She’s happy to stay in bed, listening to the news on a low volume, watching a movie on my iPhone, opting out of the previously booked bridge tour.

I abandon her for this delight. No way am I going to miss this highlight. I collected a couple of invitation cards several days earlier, choosing a random time, which turned out to be the second last group of the cruise.

We assemble on the Lido Deck lift foyer, where a security officer takes our cards and says we’re waiting on one more.

“Ah, that would be my wife,” I inform him. “She’s comatose in her hammock below.”

He keeps a close eye on me after that, but not quite close enough to keep me entirely from mischief.

There’s six of us in the group. Me, two cheerful and rotund gentlemen, and a family group of three: two parents and the sort of keen ten year old lad who might be considering a career as a ship’s officer once he finishes primary school.

A ship’s officer not a great deal older than the boy, but showing three stripes on his epaulettes, shows us around. There are enough screens and dials and switches and keyboards and microphones to keep any nerd happy.

What isn’t in evidence is a binnacle and a teak ship’s wheel. The whole thing looks totally 21^st century computer driven and ergonomically organised.

Three people driving the ship through the Med. Officer of the watch – a chubby young fellow who looks barely out of high school, who is lazing in a comfortable padded chair behind a computerised radar screen and an impressive set of controls. His deputy is an equally youthful young lady, sitting beside him. A bridge lookout completes the set.

The radio sets are outlined. The radio operator on the Titanic might have frantically tapped out his distress call on a Morse key, but nowadays the emergency channel is a computerised radio with a global range. Press two keys and a signal is broadcast giving the ship’s information, including position and course, and a brief description of the emergency: fire, man overboard, run aground, collision...

There’s a similar system available for more mundane activities, and a call between two ships, one off Alaska, one in Darwin, is described. “We can send a text message, but nowadays we just use email.”

Next is a talk between ships system. “That freighter out there,” indicating a tiny dot in the distance, “if I wanted to contact her, learn her name, destination and so on, all I need do is call her on this VHF set. Range of about thirty kilometres, which is anything we can see up to and a little over the horizon.”

An aviation communications system to talk to helicopters for the occasional medical emergency. “It takes us two hours to rig the deck for helicopter operations, five minutes to make the transfer, and another two hours to get everything back to normal. We use the shuffleboard area aft on the sun deck, and have to clear away all the cables, stow the deckchairs, evacuate the cabins for three decks under. And then set it all back to rights.”

I’ve seen that area. It’s not big enough for use as a flight deck, so obviously people would have to be winched up and down, in stretchers if need be.

Other consoles control communications around the ship, including the public address system. There’s about six months of study here, I reckon, speaking as an old signalman, to master it all.

Next is the radar display. It’s a big screen, and it has a tonne of information plotted. Our guide presses a few buttons and loads it up with more. Outlines of nearby landmasses, the position of the freighter, now rapidly drawing nearer, our intended course, our actual course, depth under the keel...

Older ships, such as Aurora’s sister ship Oriana, have a library of paper charts, but it’s all digitised here, and can be displayed as an overlay on the radar. The freighter ahead of us is locked in as a target and its speed and course shown as a vector. Unhappily it is sitting right on the redline marking the optimum course for Barcelona. The officer of the watch caresses a tiny joystick about the size of his little finger, and our course alters to pass her safely.

I’ve honestly forgotten most of the presentation. There were consoles for thrusters and stabilisers – amazingly, the stabilisers haven’t been deployed, despite the alarming level of the waves and the increasing motion up here – fire alarm and sprinkler systems, water and fuel tanks. All explained, all questions cheerfully answered.

Out on each of the bridge wings, jutting out from the ship’s side, is another complete ship control system. The bow and stern thrusters can keep the ship steady against a thirty knot crosswind. Amazing for a ship this big. The wind pressure on our towering sides must be enormous.  There’s even a pane of armoured glass set into the floor, looking straight down, to aid in precise docking.

I’ve seen how the ship is handled in port. Precision and firm control describes our docking manoeuvres. Aurora might as well be on rails.

I take advantage of a momentary lapse of attention on the part of the security man to release a book on the shelf where the bridge staff keep their caps. The security guy is watching the boy gingerly prodding the glass floor with his shoe, as if it might break if stepped on, sending him plunging sixty metres into the heaving ocean.

My chosen release title is “The Bluffer’s Guide to Television”, one of a serious of light (in both senses) little books that I can slip into an easy pocket and leave for a delighted finder. In passing, I must note that so far I have had zero catches, despite releasing at least one book per day. Some of them, I thought, excellent themed releases. Put it down to the awful internet connections on ship and ashore.

We’ve run out of things to look at now, and the security guy is starting to make noises about the next group. Our officer sighs and says goodbye. Thanks from the grateful passengers and we are ushered out. On the way we can’t help but notice a dear’s head mounted on the wall – an oddity in this hi-tech environment.

“Oh that? It’s a gift from the port of Hooster (sp?). Every time a new cruise ship docks, they go out, shoot a deer and present it to the captain.”

I returned to my comatose wife in her wildly swaying hammock and filled her full of fascinating information. She sighed.

No dinner for Kerri tonight. A formal night in black and white, she wasn’t up to dressing for dinner looking so green. Fair enough. I went up to the Orangery, consumed a swift meal of roast pork and onion rings, and returned to my ill wife with a brace of apples to get her through the night.

The weather worsened through the night with at least one set of amazing leaps and bounds. Didn’t quite throw us out of bed, but I doubt too many people slept through it. And then, somewhere in the wee hours, the sea and the wind abated. Back to the normal “millpond” conditions for our dignified entry into Barcelona, just a few bundles of “motion discomfort bags” in the public areas as a reminder of the night.