Vampire Parrot

Aft cabins are absolutely awful. If the sea is rough, you pitch up and down which is not good if you are sensitive to motion.

It's a long walk to the bow, which is typically where the theatre is.

So just to be kind to everyone else, I always make a point of booking an aft cabin.... ;)

Figs for breakfast, a pint of Guinness every evening, and Perry Stalsis will visit you every day.

As Captain BJ says (I love reading his posts... and I learn a lot from them), the stablizers only reduce roll, and at the optimum stablizer speed (which is typically about 19-20 knots on a ship which has a service speed of 22-24 knots), they reduce roll by about 85%.

However, stabilizers can increase the pitching motion. This is the motion of the bow moving up and down, which causes the ship to pivot around it's centre of gravity, thus causing the stern to also move up and down. (I'm usually in a stern cabin on the top accomodation deck so am rather familiar with pitching...)

To reduce this, the ship will then be steered so that it's not going directly into and thus up and down the swells, but instead will be about 15 degrees off the swells. The ship's speed may also be slightly reduced to ease the pitching motion.

The least motion is felt in a midship inside cabin on the lowest deck.

Last October, the Arcadia successfully docked at Ponta Delgarda in the Portugese Azores in high winds. The large bow thrusters and fully rotatable azipods make the Arcadia and her sisters (such as Holland America's Vista class) easier to handle in high winds than a ship such as the Aurora, which has shafted propellors with bow and stern thrusters.

As a point of interest, sevearl of the Caribbean islands have ports that are fairly tricky to get in and out of - such as Barbados.

I had an interesting conversation with the Captain of the Zuiderdam (which is almost identical to the Arcadia), and he told me that the ship was quite capable of mooring up in winds of up to 27 knots without any assistance from tugs.

James

Yes, I sailed on the Fair Princess.. back in 1967, when she had her original name, "Carinthia".

She was a beautiful ship.......