Antarctica, Day 1 of the Voyage
Mar. 13th, 2024 08:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsDespite everything, the first morning “at sea” (we weren’t really, we were still getting out of the long chain of islands around the south-eastern tip of South America) I awoke early the way I do at home, and I finally got a good look at the Pursuit.
It was not what I expected at all.
Seabourn Pursuit Deck 4 Theater
There’s an auditorium right at the heart of the ship on Deck 4, but it’s small, with long couches arranged around the stage and room for less than 300 people. Behind that is the “Expedition Room,” which has a cocktail and coffee bar along one wall, and the ship’s tiny “boutique” along the other. Behind that is the atrium stairwell that goes from Deck 2 to Deck 9, and finally, taking up the rear of the deck, is the ship’s restaurant.
Lunch on the Aft Deck 5th Floor
Deck five is mostly cabins (including mine and Omaha’s), at the rear of which is the “Colonnade”, where the smorgasboard is hosted, and finally an open deck with two hot tubs and a small “swimming pool” no more than three meters on a side and less than two meters deep. The deck is as broad as the ship with small serving area that has alcohol and cold drinks.
Deck six has the cafe at the rear, and another open-air rear deck area where people can sit on lounge chairs under radiant electrical heaters. The cafe was full-service and included an oven where the pastries were baked right before your eyes if you got there early enough. Outdoors, the temperature hovered just three degrees above freezing, but under the heaters, especially with hot coffee, it was a lovely place to wake up, read, and watch the world recede into the distance. Most of decks six, seven, and eight are cabins, but Six Forward has the Observation Lounge, which was less a “lounge” than a nice place to sit, with a ’fridge for soda pops, hot and cold water taps, and a collection of teas, but it also has repeaters for many of the instruments on the bridge. We could see many of the ship’s inner workings: navigation, autopilot, engineering, radars, and weather monitoring. It was interesting to note that the Captain was listed as the “backup navigator;” on this ship, the computer was in control.
Deck seven had a fitness center, yoga floor, massage tables and “wellness center” at the back.
Deck eight was cabins only, including the even-more-insane penthouse cabins, each of which has its own hot hub. I can’t imagine what it costs to book one of those.
Deck nine had the forward lounge, which had the biggest bar of all, as well as a sushi chef preparing dinners for anyone who didn’t want to go into the restaurant and smorgasboard. The rear lounge was smaller and more intimate, with live music every night along with the occasional trivia night. The forward lounge was quieter, and in the daytime the science staff seemed to congregate there since it had little to offer before the bar opened at seven. In between the two was an open deck where the Zodiacs are stowed and the cranes for lifting them installed.
Happy Couple
We cleared the islands and headed out into Drake’s Passage. Described in Wikipedia as “one of the most treacherous bodies of water in the world,” the weather was perfect, the seas calm with full sun and wind barely 6km out of the northeast. “Drake’s Lake,” is what one of the crew called it. Omaha and I had a lovely day of exploring the ship and enjoying the sunlight.
And despite the apparent calm of the seas, Omaha became violently seasick that night, so much so that I ultimately made sure we got her down to sickbay, where they gave her IV fluids and a dose of the dymenhydrinate (generic Dramamine). They were worried because dymenhydrinate is not a friendly drug for epileptics and can inhibit the effectiveness of older antiseziure medications. She was in sickbay for about four hours before they wheeled her back to our cabin around 1am, stable and doing better. She was too shaky to manage her CPAP and didn’t sleep well that night. The nurse said they’d tested her for norovirus and that had been negative, so they were chalking it up to seasickness.
I don’t tend to get seasick. I spent a significant chunk of my adolescence in the Florida Keys and had my own boat (if you can call a few scraps of heavy plywood, six 55-gallon drums, two dangerously fiberglass “noses” to reduce drag, and a really cranky Evinrude outboard clamped to the plywood a “boat”), and sleep perfectly well at sea in everything from calm to hurricane weather.
And I have comfortable, reusable earplugs made of surgical silicone that block snoring perfectly. They’re “expensive” in the Vimes Theory of Boots way: buying two pair will set you back $150, but if you don’t have $150 in your pocket you’ll buy a month’s worth of foam plugs for about $13… and spend $160/year. So Omaha’s snoring didn’t bother me at all.
I was finally settling back to something resembling “normal.” I hoped Omaha would as well.
It was not what I expected at all.
Seabourn Pursuit Deck 4 TheaterThere’s an auditorium right at the heart of the ship on Deck 4, but it’s small, with long couches arranged around the stage and room for less than 300 people. Behind that is the “Expedition Room,” which has a cocktail and coffee bar along one wall, and the ship’s tiny “boutique” along the other. Behind that is the atrium stairwell that goes from Deck 2 to Deck 9, and finally, taking up the rear of the deck, is the ship’s restaurant.
Lunch on the Aft Deck 5th Floor
Deck five is mostly cabins (including mine and Omaha’s), at the rear of which is the “Colonnade”, where the smorgasboard is hosted, and finally an open deck with two hot tubs and a small “swimming pool” no more than three meters on a side and less than two meters deep. The deck is as broad as the ship with small serving area that has alcohol and cold drinks.
Deck six has the cafe at the rear, and another open-air rear deck area where people can sit on lounge chairs under radiant electrical heaters. The cafe was full-service and included an oven where the pastries were baked right before your eyes if you got there early enough. Outdoors, the temperature hovered just three degrees above freezing, but under the heaters, especially with hot coffee, it was a lovely place to wake up, read, and watch the world recede into the distance. Most of decks six, seven, and eight are cabins, but Six Forward has the Observation Lounge, which was less a “lounge” than a nice place to sit, with a ’fridge for soda pops, hot and cold water taps, and a collection of teas, but it also has repeaters for many of the instruments on the bridge. We could see many of the ship’s inner workings: navigation, autopilot, engineering, radars, and weather monitoring. It was interesting to note that the Captain was listed as the “backup navigator;” on this ship, the computer was in control.
Deck seven had a fitness center, yoga floor, massage tables and “wellness center” at the back.
Deck eight was cabins only, including the even-more-insane penthouse cabins, each of which has its own hot hub. I can’t imagine what it costs to book one of those.
Deck nine had the forward lounge, which had the biggest bar of all, as well as a sushi chef preparing dinners for anyone who didn’t want to go into the restaurant and smorgasboard. The rear lounge was smaller and more intimate, with live music every night along with the occasional trivia night. The forward lounge was quieter, and in the daytime the science staff seemed to congregate there since it had little to offer before the bar opened at seven. In between the two was an open deck where the Zodiacs are stowed and the cranes for lifting them installed.
Happy CoupleWe cleared the islands and headed out into Drake’s Passage. Described in Wikipedia as “one of the most treacherous bodies of water in the world,” the weather was perfect, the seas calm with full sun and wind barely 6km out of the northeast. “Drake’s Lake,” is what one of the crew called it. Omaha and I had a lovely day of exploring the ship and enjoying the sunlight.
And despite the apparent calm of the seas, Omaha became violently seasick that night, so much so that I ultimately made sure we got her down to sickbay, where they gave her IV fluids and a dose of the dymenhydrinate (generic Dramamine). They were worried because dymenhydrinate is not a friendly drug for epileptics and can inhibit the effectiveness of older antiseziure medications. She was in sickbay for about four hours before they wheeled her back to our cabin around 1am, stable and doing better. She was too shaky to manage her CPAP and didn’t sleep well that night. The nurse said they’d tested her for norovirus and that had been negative, so they were chalking it up to seasickness.
I don’t tend to get seasick. I spent a significant chunk of my adolescence in the Florida Keys and had my own boat (if you can call a few scraps of heavy plywood, six 55-gallon drums, two dangerously fiberglass “noses” to reduce drag, and a really cranky Evinrude outboard clamped to the plywood a “boat”), and sleep perfectly well at sea in everything from calm to hurricane weather.
And I have comfortable, reusable earplugs made of surgical silicone that block snoring perfectly. They’re “expensive” in the Vimes Theory of Boots way: buying two pair will set you back $150, but if you don’t have $150 in your pocket you’ll buy a month’s worth of foam plugs for about $13… and spend $160/year. So Omaha’s snoring didn’t bother me at all.
I was finally settling back to something resembling “normal.” I hoped Omaha would as well.
