I think most guests have taken advantage of the 2nd day at sea, or maybe it was the 2nd hour forward, as early this morning it was a lot quieter in the Lido Restaurant than what I am used to. Normally by 06.45 – 07.00 on a sea day there are already a lot of guests going for an early breakfast but today it was not until 08.00 before I saw the same level of activity. Well I suppose that is what a cruise is all about you do not need the 6 am bus to get there and thus far we have not yet ever ran out of food.

We had a distinctively wobbly night. The disturbance to the North is disappearing but the wind is pushing the wave system caused by it down. This caused the increase in swell during yesterday afternoon and evening. It must have been quite a strong disturbance as any swell is supposed to die out after the wind is gone, and the movement over the ocean should help the dampening even more, but the waves still deepened out to 3 meters (9 feet) and sometimes more, and just with the sort of length that made the ms Rotterdam pitch. If a ship has to pitch then we always hope for a steady pitch with a predictable pattern. Everybody on board can get used to it and it prevents incidents as people know when the next movement (“Lurch” according to most of the guests) will occur. However Nature seldom works that way and thus the ship occasionally lurches more than at other times and it feels as if the ship is going into a dip and then jumps out of it again.

The lighter the color the higher the swell. Where the ms Rotterdam currently is the height is 9 feet and over.

0 The lighter the color the higher the swell. Where the ms Rotterdam currently is the height is 9 feet and over. (Map Courtesy www. surf-cast.com)

This extra dip is caused by the way the waves, now called swell, as they are old waves, interact with each other. Not all the waves are running exactly at the same distance from each other. Now they have different speeds, different levels of height, they interact with waves which were already there and they can even merge and become a bigger wave among the regular pattern of similar waves.  When two of those waves meet, they can either cancel each other out (e.g. the 2nd wave fills the hole of the first wave) or it can enhance the other wave by adding to the existing wave height and wave depth. And that is what we had last night and today. Sometimes a very pronounced pitch, and then a sort of restful period with only minimal movement. And nothing we can do about it apart from going very slow. But we are already on a slow speed of 15 knots and 15 knots is needed to get to Aalesund on time and thus we “lurch” along our course line until we run out of this wave field.

I am talking of course about the “pitching” of the ship, not the rolling. There were the bow rises up and down because the waves/swell are coming from straight ahead or under a small angle on either side. At the moment this angle is about 30o measured from the bow. The more that angle would be going towards 90o, the more it would affect the rolling of the ship and less and less the pitching. Once the swell would be nearly perpendicular the ship would only roll. So with this angle of 30o we have both movements. Pitching and Rolling. We do not feel the rolling today as the ships stabilizers can completely take care of it.  Stabilizers normally take care off about 90% of the rolling movement of a ship. If we would have the current 10 feet of swell  90o on the beam then there would be a maximum of 1 foot influence on the ship. With the 30o angle there is no 10 feet influence and that  the stabilizers can easily control of what we perceive as rolling.

There is no cure against pitching yet. There is a large prize out there of several million dollars waiting for the person who comes up with a solution but thus far no takers. So we just have to pitch up and down until we come in the lee of the Norwegian Coast. That will be in the early morning when we approach the pilot station. Aalesund lies sheltered inside the coastline and thus it will take about an hour from the pilot station to get to the dock.

Aalesund has a very nice sheltered.

Aalesund has a very nice sheltered harbour. We dock at this side of the town, close to the down town area. (At least as of this moment!)

The plan for us is to dock in the south harbor which is on the Southside of the city. At the Northside there are docks as well and a smaller inner harbor which once is/was the fishing port. According to the weather forecast it is raining there today but sunshine and very little wind is expected tomorrow.  Temperatures will be around 54oF / 12oF which is a bit chilly for the time of the year but to be expected as long as the Northerly Winds keep blowing.