What is the worst weather you have encountered?

[sloopsailor]

125.6 degrees in the Valley of the Kings during a Nile Cruise.

 

Ahhh, yes, the heat in the Valley of the Kings. Not easily forgotten!

 

Your comment brings back many memories of our Nile cruise in 1991. Memories such as: the ship frequently running aground onto the many sandbars in the middle of the river (they extricate themselves quite easily, however); the rafting against other ships at the few available spaces at the docks, and all night long hearing and feeling the ship moving almost constantly as ships closer to the dock leave and everybody repositions themselves one space closer; the chanting of evening prayers from the tops each minaret in the villages along the river as we passed by; to those beautiful feluccas (nile style sailboats) crossing mere feet in front of our ship as we made our way down river. Good memories. For you readers out there, a cruise down the Nile is about as unique as it gets!

 

Sorry everyone for the off topic comment.

 

 

[HOHSgunny]

Last year on Mariner of the Seas we sailed through the tail of Hurricane Paloma, the Captain told us that we may have to change ports but we ended up staying with our itinerary, the ship rocked a little more but the view from our balcony was awesome watching it as we passed through

[billsgal]

I have to agree that last years' Jewel Repo from Boston had the worst seas we've experienced, and that includes the Constellation transatlantic in 2007 when the name of the ship was scrubbed off the side from the high waves, and the Brilliance transatlantic where we had 60-70 seas, and we watched from the Viking Crown Lounge as the waves broke over the bow of the ship! Brilliance and Connie were bad, but last year's Jewel repo beats them! Didn't learn our lesson, we are doing the repo again this year!

 

Rita

[cruiserbryce]

22 ft seas and 40 mph winds on Liberty of the seas...pools were drained and the decks were closed

[tinaweha]

Never go around Cape Horn on a smaller ship (Oceania). The waves came up to the 4th floor deck.

 

Not very fun.:eek:

[amybeth4]

This past Nov. Tropical Storm...Ida was it? Would not leave us alone for the last few days. The waves were 12-15 feet (not horrible...I've felt much worse on the Grandeur in bright sunshine) but the rain was pretty brutal and relentless (except for a few great breaks!).

 

The captain told us the height of the waves because he then announced that the Oasis was on her way to FLL and in the middle of the Atlantic, experiencing 40-foot waves. :eek:

[sandytoes03]

A brief torrential downpour while in Miami before setting sail. We were in the hot tub and they let us just stay in. It was awesome! The only bad part was that our clothes were drenched, (we had them on chairs, and could not get to them soon enough to put them under cover) and we hadn't received our luggage yet. But, for that reason, we just stayed in the hot tub even longer. :D

[Tranquil Waters]

The scariest weather I have ever witnessed was at Coco Cay. So it wasn't so much how bad but what happened and almost happened. I think it must have been our 4 night Bahamas cruise.

 

They were able to tender in the AM. Then the wind started really picking up and they had to stop taking people over to Coco Cay but they still had people on the island to get back to the ship (fortunately we were not on the cruise that had to leave people on the island over night :eek: ).

 

Anyway, we were on the tender and got to the ship. But when they tried to bring the tender along side, the waves were so choppy that they could not put the gangpland between the ship and the tender. They kept trying for like about 10 minutes. Then they pull us away and take us around to the other side of the ship (I guess hoping the ship itself will block the wind enough to let us connect). So we try side 2 for about 15 minutes. Still no go.

 

Back to side one and try yet again to no avail. So now the ship starts up its engines and they turn the ship a quarter turn to see if that will block the wind. And we try "hooking up" for about 15 minutes.

 

By now we have been along side the ship for about 45 minutes. They finally get the gangplank between the ship and the tender and start unloading passengers back on the ship. The tender and the gangplank are bouncing around all this time. All of a sudden there is an onset of even larger waves. And the lip of the gangplank that secures the gangplank to the ship bounces over the edge of the ship.

 

2 very fortunate things happened at this point. First the stronger waves had slowed people going on the gangplank and one woman "balked and hesitated to set on gangpland as she was unsteady on her feet anyway. So there was a gap of people with those before her already on the ship. Then she had just finally stepped up onto the gangplank.

 

The second fortunate thing is that there is about 6-8 inches of gangplank that extends beyond the "lip". So when the lip bounced over the ship, that little 6-8 inch extention stayed resting on the edge of the ship long enough for the ship crew to frantically grap the gangplank and resecure the lip over the edge of the ship. At the same time the crew on the tender grabbed the woman back off the gangplank.

 

If that bounce had carried the gangplank another few inches it would have fallen into the ocean and taken anyone on the gangplank with it. And with the ship and the tender boucing next to each other the way it was certainly it could have meant serious injury or death to those in the water.

 

One thing I can say for sure is that I never question now when hearing that we are going to miss a port because the ship cannot tender! :)

[BecciBoo]

I thought my story was good, but some of these others put it to shame. We followed a northerner out of Galveston in 2006 on Splendour one January...one of those really good winter storms (about like we're having right this minute...will be 19 degrees here in South Texas tomorrow) wind howling and rain, lovely 35' swells. The pool in solarium after muster was sloshing like a dishpan up and down and out of the pool, like some of the pics you've been posting. My DH wanted to get in the pool so he went to our cabin and changed while I sat bundled in my coat on a lounge chair, but he forgot the camera so I didn't get a pic.:( He said it was the most fun he ever had in a ship's pool, but they came through just a few minutes later and shut down the pool, they were all drained and netted for the remainder of the way down to Cozumel. That first night I (who never has gotten sick on a cruise) almost didn't make it because we were in the theater and the curtain was swaying one way while the ship was listing the other and that movement was clearing the theater, people were exiting with their hands over their mouths every few seconds. I made it through the show and then when we went to go to bed, we got off the elevator looked down our hall and Yes, it was like a mine field all the way down the hall. Todd had to lead me with my eyes closed and nose pinched to get into our cabin but I made it...so far no upchuck on a cruise, but it was a close one. Henry was really busy that night! The next day at sea they closed the sliding glass doors as the wind was blowing people down when they opened them and at lunch they made us all sit port side in the dining room. I had no trouble after that and we were among only a handful of people who watched the bow waves on the promenade deck that day. It finally calmed down when we got to Cozumel, but a lot of excursions were cancelled. Passion Island was still a blast but it was cool and murky water churned up by the same storm. I had pictures but can't find them. It was a wild ride. But I love storms, to me its very exhilerating.

[BecciBoo]

 

The pool in Solarium on Splendour looked just like this!

[CruisingCaraCat]

On a cruise ship, I've never seen it the least bit rough, although I've seen people get sick. Now on a Navy ship, I've seen it so rough that the Captain sent everyone to their racks (beds) unless they were absolutely needed. Unfortunately, a piece of my equipment quit & I had to get up to fix it. That was the closest I ever got to being seasick. That was on the USS Oliver Hazard Perry (FFG-7), a rather small ship.

 

My worst was also on an MSTS crossing the Pacific (many, many years ago). We went through a gale and noone was allowed on deck - even below decks ropes had to be strung in order to get from one end to the other.

 

This was on the USS Patrick which was probably about the size of the Song of America (or one of Oasis's lifeboats).

 

It is also the only time that I can remember actually getting sick and losing some chow.

[Rellyrooly]

We were on Golden Princess in June 2007 going to Alaska. This is normally a very easy sail so it was totally a shock when we hit very rough seas. I don't know how big the waves were but there were 1800 people that visited the infirmary that sailing; crew and passengers. The infirmary ran out of all sea sickness meds and enterprising passengers on board sold what they could at very inflated prices to fellow sick passengers. The captain told us it was the worst seas he had ever seen in his whole career. The worst part was that we weren't going up and down; we were rolling up/down and side to side. There was vomit everywhere and areas were closed off in the ship that were either too dangerous or had too much vomit! The poor crew was so miserable between cleaning vomit, complaining passengers and being sick themselves. Worst sailing I have ever been on but I still love cruising because when it's good, it's OH SO GOOD!

[UPCrawfish]

Actually, the worst weather I have EVER encountered is the blizzard and cold we are experiencing in the midwest / Nebraska right now ! Over 30" of snow since Thanksgiving with an average annual of 26" !!

 

As I type, we just had 6 new on top of the 24" of snow from November and December that never went away with winds gusting to 40 mph and Wind Chill in the -20 range.. :eek:

 

I now return you to your regular programing.......:D

 

(cabin fever.................:rolleyes:)

[Taxguy77]

I forgot to put the pictures in JPEG format. here they are:

 

We were on a ship where the water sloshed like that, spilling out on deck at each end every time. I was in the pool with about 4 others and had a ball. The water would be less than waist deep (deep end) and then go to well over the head. :p

When I climbed out, no climbing! Just waited until that end had water sloshing out and put my foot on the top rung.:D

[Taxguy77]

:mad:Sept 2005 on Grandeur of Seas returning to Baltimore from Bermuda we ran into remnants of Hurricane Opehlia off Cape Hatteras and spent an extra day at sea trying to outflank her. Seas were pretty ruff, winds high and rainy. Lots of seasick passengers and full barf bags. Didn't phase me in the casino.:)

 

A few years ago we had an old, round-bottomed gambling ship out of here. DW went with some friends and was the only one not seasick. She said she just propped her feet up to hold the chair in place and kept playing the slots. Maybe casinos are the place to avoid seasickness.:confused::):D

[stowaway2k]

 

Not the worst I've seen, but the worst when I've been leaning over the side with my camera... :eek:

 

.

[paul929207]

We sailed thru hurricane Danny last summer as we headed to NYC at the end of a transatlantic on the Tahitian Princess. We had left the previous port 12 hours late, so there was no choice but to go full speed thru the storm to get to NYC close to on time.

[room010]

I know that seasickness can strike suddenly and without warning (and luckily it hasn't happened to me - yet) but if you are feeling a bit queazy then going to dinner or a show with other "green" people all around me is the very LAST thing I'd want to do. Take a hefty dose of meds and crawl into bed would be my plan.