calm waters

[bobby'sgirl]

Thinking of aBaltic cruise in the future. Sailed the Inner Passage from Vancouver this year and only experienced rough water before and after the passage. Is there a particular route to consider, I do get motion sick easily and do not want to spoil a cruise. Medication help to control but would like to avoid rough seas if possible. thanks for you help:)

[JodiBB]

The North Sea crossing can be choppy, as we found out, so if you want to avoid this, then you want to try to steer clear of ships that go from England to the Baltics. There's no other routes this way...

 

I've been told that there are tours that start/end in Copenhagen. This would be a better route for you and Copenhagen is so wonderful that it'll be a great city to come into several days before the cruise...

[Andee]

I agree with not starting/ending in the UK.

 

We sailed on the Orient Marco Polo, which started in Stockholm, ended in Copenhagen, and included both the Scandinavian/Balctic cities and the Norwegian fjords.

[CA traveler]

Both the Star Princess and I think HAL's Westerdam depart and return to Copenhagne so you are already in the Baltic. On our 10 day cruise on the Star, one evening there was some slight movement and when we tndered into port outside of stockholm it was raining and the tender did move around a little, the remainder of the time the seas were very calm.

[bobby'sgirl]

Thanks for your replies. How choppy does the North Sea get and how long is the ship in this type of water?

[JodiBB]

Thanks for your replies. How choppy does the North Sea get and how long is the ship in this type of water?

 

On our 12-day cruise, we were in the North Sea for the first 2 days and then once getting to our first port, we were in other Gulfs and Seas. How choppy does it get? Ours was quite choppy (I don't know how to describe or give you a measurement...sorry), but the stabilizers on the boat were wonderful. It could've been a lot worse.

 

My DH used the patch which helped immensely, although he could really feel the boat rock...I felt it, but not as strongly.

[sunprincess]

Just back from the Star Princess, Copenhagen route for Baltic. Calm seas the entire cruise. :)

[MTemple212]

Has anyone ever tried Mecclizine(sp) for sea sickness? I was in the navy for over 18 years and I always got seasick but never found out about this stuff until after I had retired and started pleasure cruising. my Doctor prescribed it to me and it works the best of anything I have ever tried without the side effects of most other medications like dramamine,etc.

[Sequim88]

Meclizine is available OTC. Same stuff a Bonine but different from Dramamine. It is an antihistamine and is supposed to be less sedating than Dramamine BUT....it knocked both my wife and I out and made us very light headed and woozy feeling for about 12 hours. Worse for us than the problem it is supposed to help. When it wore off I had a terrific headache. If I'm going to get woozy and then get a headache I'll stick to bourbon. ;)

 

Baltic Sea wave height info and forecasts can be found at:

http://www.fimr.fi/en/itamerinyt/aaltoennuste.html

watching this over time and in the right seasons can give a pretty good idea of how "rough" it gets. In general....anything under 1m (about 3 ft.) will not be very noticable and pretty similar to inside passage conditions. Click on the "wave records" link at the bottom for "worst case" - that being about 7m (25ft or so) in the Northern Baltic in December of 2004.

[JodiBB]

My DH tried Bonine and the North Sea was still to choppy for him. He resorted to using the prescribed patches and the did the trick.