Rough seas en route to Barcelona

Yesterday we were informed that the strong Mistral winds were blowing in the Marseilles area, preventing us from stopping there and causing very rough seas that we’d have to go through en route to our final destination, Barcelona.

We’ve experienced rough seas before on cruise ships, so we weren’t concerned about anything other than the possibility of seasickness.

But we’ve never experienced seas this rough!  The ship wasn’t just rocking, but shaking, shuddering, suddenly slamming one way or another.  We’d thought the announcement that no passengers would be allowed outside sounded silly, but now we understood the reason.

I tried to go outside on our balcony to get a photo of the ocean, but that door had been locked, as well - they apparently didn’t want scoff-laws like me flying overboard when the ship suddenly lurched.  Here’s a picture I took through the spray-covered window (we’re on the 6th floor).

You can’t see the size of the swells - they were very impressive.  

The only way we can avoid seasickness is to keep horizontal, so we stayed in bed until we finally got past the storm - a little before 1:00 pm.  We didn’t hear anyone else out moving about, either.

The captain announced that they’d recorded 80 knot wind gusts - according to Google, that 92+ mph.

We arrived in Barcelona in late afternoon - we hadn’t been scheduled to arrive until tomorrow morning.  Shuttle buses were available to go into the city, but we just chilled on board and attended the final history presentation, this one on Spain.





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