At Sea – First Sightings of The Lights

Today, we were at sea, heading towards our next port-of-call, Alta.

Being a sea-day meant work for me; today, I had them painting a wild seascape, and using sandpaper to create the seaspray (a popular session).

Unfortunately, in the daily programme, they’d only mentioned the first class, starting at 10am (which was full to bursting), and not the second class, which meant the second class was a little light (only about 12 people)… note to self to remind the entertainments office to put both sessions in the programme next time…

In the evening, after dinner, we went to see the second comedian, Bruce Thompson’s delightfully anarchic performance, which we enjoyed very much. This was followed by some time up on deck, where, for the first time this cruise, we actually got to see the Northern lights.

We were a little ahead of the game, since we’d already finished getting dressed in our heavy-duty winter garb and were heading upstairs when the cruise director announced that the lights had made an appearance. The announcement put passengers in a frenzy, dashing back to their cabins to get their coats and cameras; we were able to get on deck quite quickly (not that we were the first, of course; some folks had been waiting up on deck all night).

I had my camera with me, but couldn’t for the life of me remember the settings required for aurora success. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get it to focus on the lights, and in the darkness, I couldn’t see which dials I should turn to try and improve matters so in desperation, I whipped out my phone, and managed to take some photos relatively effortlessly. They aren’t great; I think it automatically sets the ISO settings too high, which increases the sensitivity, and results in slightly noisy images, but at least I managed to capture something…

The lights appeared, then faded away, several times over the course of about 20 to thirty minutes, after which we didn’t see them again. The moon was full (which doesn’t help), and the sky became cloudy (not to mention the fact that it was perishingly cold and I’d lost all sense of feeling in my face). Eventually, we decided, at around 11:30, that it was time to call it a night. The cruise director had suggested that there was a high probability of the lights making an appearance around 3am in the morning, and that anouncements would be made, but not in the cabins. Whether they did appear or not, we’ll never know, as we were both sound asleep at that time.

Tomorrow, we’ll be in Alta, where the probability of seeing the lights will be even higher… fingers crossed…