AT SEA – FIRST CLASSES

Today was our first full day at sea since leaving Portsmouth.

It’s been a little claggy – which when translated from Northern vernacular basically means a bit misty and grey, with no distinct horizon to speak of.

It’s a Norway cruise in March, so we take the weather as we find it. Despite the clagginess, the sea has been remarkably calm all day, and other than the occasional spit of drizzle, it hasn’t been too cold when we’ve stood out on the balcony.

I suspect all that is about to change, however. The captain has made an announcement, telling us about a low pressure system North-West of Scotland that is causing stormy seas in that area. Because of this, a decision has been made to change our itinerary slightly. Our first port of call was meant to be Alesund, which will be getting the lion’s share of the bad weather and making getting into port dangerous on our arrival. Instead, we will be stopping at Bergen first (which was originally going to be our final stop), on an overnighter. By the time we head on further North, we’re hoping the bad weather will have vacated the area… (fingers crossed).

My classes went well today, with a full turnout and the usual chaos of the the first class. I’m running them in the Amalfi Restaurant, which is down on deck 6. I actually rather like running classes there because it is quieter and more self-contained. The only minor irritation is that the restaurant was being used at lunchtime to serve fish and chips, which meant that we had to clear everything away by 11:30, and reset everything up again from scratch for the afternoon class, which started at 3pm. On the previous cruise, we were able to leave things set up after the first class, so that it would be ready for us after lunch. Hey ho.

Yesterday, we were struggling with the onboard wi-fi. Between Tracey and myself, we have six devices: a laptop, tablet and mobile phone each, and the only one that we could successfully connect to the internet was my laptop. We spent all evening last night trying to figure out why, but no matter what settings we changed, we could not get them to connect.

Today, Tracey went to reception in the hopes of figuring out what the problem was. Could it be something to do with the cabin we were in, or were out devices set up wrong… but curiously, why would my laptop connect okay?
It turns out the answer was embarrassingly simple. To login in to the system, you have enter your name, cabin number and date of birth. It turns out our surnames had to be typed in in capital letters. It’s as simple as that. We were just typing the name ‘Woolley’ instead of ‘WOOLLEY’. Once that had been cleared up, we’ve now sucessfully logged in on all devices… hurrah! As for why my laptop would connecy… I suspect I had hit the ‘CAPS LOCK’ key by accident (something that I frequently manage to do for some reason)… which the system accepted.

And finally…

If anyone can tell me what this is, I’d love to hear from you. When we were sat on the balcony at lunchtime, we passed two of them that were sending out a strange three-beat bleeping sound… I’ve googled it with no luck; navigation posts? Boundary markers? Fishing related?… We’re in the North Sea, if that helps…