And here we sit. No where to go. Not much to do. We didn’t want to take any tours – we’ve been to Rome, been all through Civitavecchia and the surrounding areas, and, let’s face it – the weather stinks! So, we’re just hanging out. We watch Breakfast at Tiffany’s – God that movie is great! Have lunch, then go to a lecture on Agatha Christie, which is quite interesting. We decide to skip Ocean’s 8, because we are hoping they will show it again on the crossing – and we don’t want to blow all our movie entertainment this early. So we go up to the library to hang out, try to do the stupid crossword puzzle (It’s British, impossible!) and read for a bit, just because we don’t really want to sit in the cabin all day.
At 3:00 the skies darken, I mean really darken, like it’s night time. The ship’s outdoor lights come on, and the wind starts to howl. Thunder rolls, lightening flickers in the near distance – and the wind becomes fierce. The lamp posts on the pool deck are moving – swaying and stuttering with the wind. So fierce in fact that we break our lines! Oh boy! All of us in the Library are running from side to side watching the ship break away from it’s mooring and drift aimlessly in the port lanes. They are calling “Echo, echo, echo” over the loudspeaker, as the ship is drifting on a 180 degree arc, turning totally around. There is a huge bang, and a shudder – and we figure we’ve either hit the pier, or broken our last lines. The pictures below show us adrift off our pier. remember we are supposed to be hard alongside – and there are hundreds of passengers off the ship who need to get back on.
There are a bunch of idiot passengers outside taking pictures – the wind is so strong they can barely stand up – meanwhile, we’re drifting aimlessly in the port with docks and ships on either side of us. Happy sailing!
Or not! We get the tugs out here quick enough. Two of them pushing us on to the pier (the pier about a 1/2 mile down from where we originally docked) and another one out there just hovering around for back up. We re so far down the pier, that the ferries are directly across from us. When we boarded, they were a 1/2 mile away. Scary!
The captain comes on to tell us everything is fine. No injuries, no damage, everything is under control. Thank you for that. They’ve still not changed anything at that point, but it remains to be seen what will happen. The seas are still crazy bad, even though the winds are sort of dying down. Everything aboard goes according to schedule, the evening lecture is on time, although the first officer does do an announcement telling us we will be moving along the pier to try to get the gangway open again for returning passengers (by our accounts, they’ve been out in the pier facilities now for close to 3 hours).
Hey. Not sailing tonight and going straight to Livorno is fine by us – even if we miss the 2 ports we’ve never been. If it’s smooth (or smoother) sailing, we’ll take it.
We were supposed to sail for Bastia at 9pm. As of this writing, it is 10:18 and we are still hard alongside (with the help of one tug) with no indication that we are going anywhere soon. More updates later.
10:22 pm- the Captain has just announced that we will not be leaving right not, the Port authorities will not allow us to leave because the seas are really bad at the buoys. We are moving to a “safer” berth in the port – what does that tell you? It tells you that I’m a happy camper because it will be a smooth night – and I don’t have to take any more pill!
So,now, we will give everyone an update tomorrow when we figure out what is going on and where we actually sail.
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