AT SEA – FIRST CLASSES

Today was our first full day at sea. Three consecutive sea-days will see us cross the Bay of Biscay, and – all being well – arrive in Gibraltar on Thursday.

All of which means work for me. I’ll be running two classes each day, at 9:30am and 2pm. The program informed passengers that they would need to register for both classes at 9am, but the message was a little ambiguous, and anyone enquiring about the classes at Reception were being told that no registration was necessary, and to just turn up.

In the end, despite a little bit of confusion, it didn’t really matter. We were convinced a rather bouncy sea was sure to keep folks away for the morning session… except it didn’t, and we managed to get a good group of twenty. In the afternoon, we topped that with 28, so a decent turn-out all things considered.

Being located in the Coast to Coast resaurant was also slightly confusing to a few people, who couldn’t understand why it wasn’t happening in the craft room upstairs on deck 7… to which I didn’t really have a good answer. The craft room is a good space, but it’s also open, and quite noisy, with sounds drifting up from the adjacent atrium and the piano player downstairs. One big advantage of the Coast to Coast is that it is quite and self-contained, which makes teaching and communicating much easier.

Needless to say, the classes – The Building Blocks of Watercolour – seemed to go down well, with good feedback and generally happy punters.

Having two classes meant that, by the time we’d cleared everything up at the end of the second session, there wasn’t a great deal of time left before dinner. We spent it drinking tea on the balcony and enjoying some fresh air. The sea has remained bouncy all day, and quite windy out on deck, although it rather feels like it might be calming down just a little.

Also this evening, the ship’s clocks went forward on hour, meaning we lose an hour’s sleep… needless to say; we were very tired and opted for a reasonabliy early night, ready to do it all again tomorrow.