Page 111 - 2003 - Atlantic Islands

At 7:15 AM, after no real sleep, John came on the PA and told us what we already

knew - that we were in very heavy seas. He said the captain had asked that everyone

stay in his room and try to keep as safe as possible there. No falling around. For about

a minute or perhaps 90 seconds there was the ominous sound of silence - no engine

noise. About twenty minutes later, John came back on the PA to tell us that the main

engine had cut itself off and that the auxiliary engines had immediately come on.

However, since they are not nearly as powerful, the stabilizers do not work as well. So

that’s when we were experiencing the really enormous rises and falls of the ship.

Luckily, the chief engineer got the main engine running again in less than 20 minutes

for which we were all grateful.

The seas continued to run extremely heavily and lots of folks did not feel well. The

kitchen staff had made the usual breakfast for us but the huge swells caused a near

catastrophe because everything fell on the floor - food, glasses, silverware, fruit

juices, everything making a tremendous mess there. When the captain decided that

the conditions had improved enough for us to have breakfast, it was served in the

Leda Lounge and consisted of yogurt, bread, and bottled juices. Really that was

probably more than enough for the nervous stomachs on board.

At 10 AM John held a reading of “The White Seal”: from Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle

Book up in the Leda Lounge. We had a couple of chairs turnover with people in them

and apparently that had happened at breakfast too. I was glad that I had chosen to sit

in the banquette seats. The story is charming and John read it well. So different

though because it has nothing to do with the jungle creatures written about in the

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