A motherly Decency

Lots of wind and rain

The magic of the Westerly route is every evening we are gifted an extra hour under our pillow, and when we wake it is always well in time for breakfast. The weather has been pretty bad- lots of wind and rain and swells that salty Wehlens don't consider large, but if you are Japanese you are probably throwing up. (Apparently the Americans and the Brits don't get sea sick but the Japanese according to our sommelier, can hardly stand any bump in the sea). As I write this, the window out of the front shows only fog. 

Thomas and I have been going to the Indian acupuncturist almost every day. He is very good and we can't say no to any upselling around here. We have both been sold (on the same day) de toxifying massage oil in great quantities which will surely shield us from the mystery ingredients in the soft serve. 

I am mesmerized by the sea- both its enormity and deadliness, and have always wanted to know just how small a person would look in the water, many decks down. So in Le Havre I had Thomas go to deck 7 and take a photo of me on the shore.

I am the little person in yellow hat to the right of gangplank

To show you some scale, here is a photo of an aircraft carrier (smaller than QM2) with swimmers off of it. Point is do not fall off the boat. We are too small to find in the sea. 

On the ship there are a lot of quotes from famous people who sailed across the Atlantic. One I found particularly beautiful from Henry James:

      "She was slow but she was spacious and comfortable and there was a kind of motherly decency in her long, nursing rock and her rustling old fashioned gait. It was as if she wished not to present herself in port with the splashed eagerness of a young creature. ...(The sea) was darkly and magnificently blue and imperturbably quiet -save for the great regular swells of its heartbeats, the pulse of its life and there grew to be something so agreeable in the sense of floating there in infinite isolation and leisure. "