Reasons to be grumpy: parts one, two and three

Gabrielle in grump part two

It has to be said that I found myself in a bit of a grump yesterday. Whether it was due to so many days at sea, not looking forward to going home, but in another way so looking forward to simple things, like a room not moving, a decent brew, our food, seeing family and friends. Maybe it was the whole combo of emotions. I realise we can’t stay in this bubble forever and reality needs to return. However, it didn’t stop me from feeling a general “grumph” about things.

We managed to snatch a bit of sun in the late afternoon yesterday, but eventually, it grew cloudy and cool. Having to admit defeat, we came inside. We decided on an evening out at the restaurant. Nick was well catered for and so was I with a bit of jiggery-pokery. My mains consisted of some grilled king prawns from the starter menu and the veggies from the meaty section of the mains. And very lovely it was too. Come on guys, we’re on a roll here. We’re both reading good books at the mo, so were happy to hunker down engrossed in those after dinner as none of the evening shows appealed. It was a rocky night with long swells. The cabin creaked, knocked, rattled and juddered. Sleep was sporadic.

This morning, after finally getting a little sleep, I woke at 6 and realised we were still motoring. Odd considering we were due in Ponta Delgada at 8.30. Knowing how long it takes to go from the speed we’re normally doing out at sea, to the speed we go down to on reaching port, I felt we must be behind schedule. However, as we had a trip planned today we were up with the lark and ordered breakfast in our room. I have finally recognised that early mornings, me and a buffet breakfast don’t work…for the other passengers. They get lurched into, stood on, growled at and generally knocked about. By 7.30 when we were both showered and having our breakfast, the brain cells finally pinged into action and we realised we weren’t stopping anytime soon. We turned on the ship’s information and eventually when it showed our course, there was a joint stunned silence. Both thinking the same thing, but equally both still a bit dozy and trying to think hard about the exact geography of The Azores. Ponta Delgada in particular. 

It was a joint recognition. Ermmmmm, we’ve gone past Ponta Delgada. Maybe we’re going past and having to approach the port in a certain direction, so will come back on ourselves. I am, if nothing, an eternal optimist. Nope, we really were literally sailing past Ponta Delgada. We were fairly sure there would be an announcement at 8 and sure enough, on the button, it arrived. Due to 30-knot winds (and expected to increase throughout the day), it was not safe to consider docking. Safety was P&O’s main concern etc. However, folks, don’t worry, the Entertainment Manager will reschedule the entertainment throughout the day and let us all know what new delights were in store for us. End of announcement. No hint of oh, we’re now heading for another port in Portugal or Spain. Nothing. So did this mean we’ll just drift back slowly to the UK? I had struggled with 6 days at sea. That’d make it 10 days now if we continued our course back to the UK at a slower speed. Yikes. And then evil thoughts pounced into my head. Ohhhh I wonder if the Eric and Ern tribute act are still on board. Nick’d love that now, wouldn’t he?

When we saw Steevan, he mentioned that some people had already been queuing to get off the ship at 7am. This was a ship not stopping for anything or anyone.

So I had another grumpy session, as you do when things don’t go according to plan. Realising there’s absolutely nothing anyone can do about it, I searched out my sunnies, hat and bikini and headed balcony-wards for a bask in the sun whilst we still have it. After a while, we recognised the deed couldn’t be put off any longer and so went for our walk. It was more of a stagger than a walk. Areas being really hard to walk, as though pulling uphill and then being pushed down into a little run. We recognised that we had an emergency situation in our cabin too. Our chocolate stash had finally run out. There are some reading this who will recognise this is an absolute disaster. I hadn’t fretted, knowing we were going to run out today, as the plan was to get stocks in Ponta Delgada to last until we hit land again on Sunday. I had been hallucinating about finding a really dark, dark chocolate to go with our morning coffees. So after our walk, we went to the shops in search of replacement chocolate. There was a “free from” everything bar, so no fun there, there were kiddie chocolates, Maltesers and some Milka. Yikes, I think this is a worse situation than not landing at Ponta Delgada. We had one triangle of Toblerone left in our stash. Naturally, this had to be cut in two. First-world problems eh? Today can only get better?

The mid-day bell went announcing our fun facts. From mid-day yesterday to mid-day today we have steamed 311 nautical miles at an average speed of 13 knots. We’ve got a lovely sunny 18 degrees with a south-westerly wind of 30 knots. Below our keel, we have 3200 metres of water at 16 degrees. Of course, we waited for the announcement to say what was happening now Ponta Delgada was off the list. Nothing.

OK, we were not sure at this point if the day had got better or not. Earlier on we were playing detective/guesswork, simply because of the lack of announcements telling us what was happening with our extra day that we now had. So as we left our cabin for lunch, there was the ominous card saying that we will be moving our clocks forward an hour tonight. That means one of two things. We are heading back to the UK or we’re heading for Portugal. I suggested that Nick went back onto Vessel Finder to see if there was any update on where we were headed. Ohhhhhhh, Vigo. Nice. Only Vigo isn’t in Portugal, it’s in Spain, so that didn’t make sense with the clock change. However, at lunchtime we noticed that we really had picked up speed, big time to 20 knots, which said to me, we were on the road (ok, sea) to somewhere.

It has to be said grumpiness was rather in us. Simply because we were having to find things out for ourselves, but there were no certainties. So desperate to have something different for lunch, we headed to the restaurant. Our day rarely involves the restaurant for lunch as it shuts so early, however, with our early rise today we were hungry by 1pm. It was a chips and glass of pink sort of lunch. OK, there was an omelette thrown in there too. All my idea I hasten to add. For once, I couldn’t blame Nick for this particular naughtiness.

Eventually after lunch and we’d got back to our cabin, preparing to do some serious sunbathing, the announcement finally came. We’re on our way to Vigo and will get there Friday morning. So a clock change tonight to get us onto UK time and then another one tomorrow to get us on to Spanish time. Hallelujah, we finally know which way is up…well, east to be more correct.