Eastbound transatlantic question

[Andrewgary]

Scheduled to do our first eastbound transatlantic in April aboard the Edge and was wondering about the time changes. Are they all on  sea days? During the night? Does it really mess with your body clock? I've done several westbound ones and absolutely love the 25 hour days and am concerned about all the 23 hour days. I'm betting the crew hates it as they have to get their work done with one hour less sleep than usual. 
Any comments would be appreciated. 

[chuckroast1]

We've done two and yes they were on sea days (overnight). I don't remember for sure but there might even have been a couple of consecutive ones. 

 

They did wear on us a little but nothing kept us from sleeping in. Still beats flying. 

[raudacruise]

Our first TA was eastbound on Grandeur of the Seas. Enjoyed the cruise (sea days!) but arrived in Barcelona exhausted zombies.

 

Westbound only for me.

[sandancer]

We do both routes and have never found the time change to be a bother. 
Now if you really want a time change take a Transpacific where you get the same day twice. 

[Turtles06]

We love TAs.  As it happens, our first TA was on Celebrity (the Eclipse), and was also eastbound.  The time changes were at night, and that was the case on all TAs we've taken since then. 

 

Going into that first TA, we did not appreciate how much losing just one hour daily for a handful of days would actually affect us.  We'd made what I now know was the mistake of being too scheduled, joining team trivia, which was played at 10am.  Well, after you've lost one hour daily for a bunch of days, that trivia game became pre-dawn body time. 🤣   We still had a great time on the crossing and the cruise overall, but we learned a lot about what not to do eastbound. 

 

All of our TAs since then have been westbound.  I would not rule out another eastbound TA, I would just be careful with what, if anything, we scheduled, and just go with the flow of those time changes.   

[Denny01]

For us, we relaxed each morning and really didn’t feel any impacts. It’s a vacation so we’d sleep in a bit, letting our body set our schedule and all went fine. When we are are at home with a set schedule and losing an hr can impact me. On a cruise, we stay up later than usual, have more drinks than usual, all kinds of changes to a ‘normal’ schedule. So if we loose an hr overnight, we sleep in and get up an hr later than we did the day prior. Make sure you put up a Do Not Disturb sign if your steward thinks they know your schedule and come knocking on the door. 

 

So yes, each of us are impacted differently. But Eastbound isn’t exactly a big challenge…..to me. Done 1 and done 3 westbound. I like westbound, not particularly because of clock changes, but because we like to spend time in Europe prior to the cruise and for some reason, we are ready to head home after a cruise and wouldn’t linger after an eastbound that much. Also, living in Florida, we can rent a car and drive home after a westbound and load up more things we bought instead of being restricted to a flight. 

 

Den

 

Den

[Jim_Iain]

Yes you will have 6 nights that you turn your clock back 1 hour.    If I recall all 6 will be before Madeira (as it is part of Portugal).   

 

First off it is far easier on the body than doing all 6 hours on a airplane journey.   The beauty of having so many sea days is you can get up later or take a nap if you are tired.    I do find that people start eating earlier and going to bed earlier.  

 

We avoided them for about 10 years of TA's and took our first 3 years ago.   I'll just say it didn't  bothered us so much we are booked on Silhouette in April to Southampton.

[Andrewgary]

2 minutes ago, Jim_Iain said:

Yes you will have 6 nights that you turn your clock back 1 hour.    .

Unfortunately not back but ahead.

[Jim_Iain]

10 minutes ago, Andrewgary said:

Unfortunately not back but ahead.

You of course are correct.   I'm just having my first cup of coffee, either that or just brain dead. 

 

We had an extra hour once  because our cruise had coincide with the EC start of DST which is different from the U.S.  (March 28 this year).

 

I'm sure you will love your East Bound TA and will arrive relaxed and rested.

[DaKahuna]

8 hours ago, Jim_Iain said:

We had an extra hour once  because our cruise had coincide with the EC start of DST which is different from the U.S.  (March 28 this year).

 

 I am showing DST as starting March 13th not the 28th?  

 

 

[Nebr.cruiser]

We have done five Transatlantics, all east bound.  While we don't like 'missing' the hour, it hasn't seemed to bother us greatly, compared to flying the same distance.  

 

We do tend to sleep a lot later on the sea days, which probably helps and I'm sure the reason we do is because of the time change.  That seems to help us with the changes.

[hrhdhd]

1 hour ago, DaKahuna said:

 

 I am showing DST as starting March 13th not the 28th?  

 

 

He meant whatever "EC" is has a start of March 28.

[kwokpot]

I detest the cruiseline's that make the time change in the middle of the day. Princess loves to do that.1pm becomes 2pm and your whole afternoon is off schedule, especially meals. 

[emmas gran]

4 hours ago, kwokpot said:

I detest the cruiseline's that make the time change in the middle of the day. Princess loves to do that.1pm becomes 2pm and your whole afternoon is off schedule, especially meals. 

I like the noon / 1pm  time change as everyone knows when it is. Crew get little enough sleep and doing it every night they are worse off.

 

We change to DST the last Saturday/ Sunday March and then back last Saturday October

[Heidi13]

On 2/17/2022 at 6:50 AM, Andrewgary said:

Scheduled to do our first eastbound transatlantic in April aboard the Edge and was wondering about the time changes. Are they all on  sea days? During the night? Does it really mess with your body clock? I've done several westbound ones and absolutely love the 25 hour days and am concerned about all the 23 hour days. I'm betting the crew hates it as they have to get their work done with one hour less sleep than usual. 
Any comments would be appreciated. 

 

Time changes are always when the vessel is at sea, however then can be the evening before a port, or the evening after departure. The objective is to have the ship's cloxs be correct for the next port and also to maintain Meridian Altitude reasonably close to Noon.

 

Cloxs traditionally change at 02:00, but when E'bd and the cloxs move ahead, a number of Masters will adjust Cloxs at Noon. Changing at Noon makes it easier to comply with crew hours of work requirements.

 

No matter what direction the clox move, some crew like it and others don't. When the cloxs move forward, the watchkeepers get 20 minutes less work, but when cloxs move back, the watchkeepers must complete 20 mins extra work.

[CGTNORMANDIE]

The time change never bothered me.  I would just take a nap!  The clocks always seemed to change after Midnight.  The only problem was making it to breakfast.  The downside was at times we would wake up and find that we were about to miss breakfast.  The upside was that we would end up having a big lunch.

[Nebr.cruiser]

4 hours ago, CGTNORMANDIE said:

The time change never bothered me.  I would just take a nap!  The clocks always seemed to change after Midnight.  The only problem was making it to breakfast.  The downside was at times we would wake up and find that we were about to miss breakfast.  The upside was that we would end up having a big lunch.

This is us on TA's too!  Waking up later and later (much later than at home) and in danger of missing breakfast, my favorite meal.  And breakfast often goes until 11!.  (we are also nightowls and usually stay up quite late, if that is another excuse for sleeping in!).

[cruising cockroach]

Was on a TP eastbound on a massive (but not the most-massive by far) container ship. Clocks, when they changed, was at 1600 (IIRC).  Clocks were centrally controlled so at the appointed hour, the clock (analogue-looking one) in the cabin would start moving to the new time.

 

1 hr per day time change is much easier than flying, even if one had a lie-flat seat in FC.  Only thing about that eastbound was dinner was only serve between 1800 and 1900 so meals were *really* early and the evenings *really* long.

[CruzinMermaid]

I'm so glad you asked the question. I'm doing my first TA next year and none of this had ever occurred to me.  Now I'm wondering if I should move it to a Westbound to have time in Europe before hand along with 25 hour days on the way home. yikes.

[zdcatc12]

2 hours ago, CruzinMermaid said:

 Now I'm wondering if I should move it to a Westbound to have time in Europe before hand along with 25 hour days on the way home. yikes.

On a sea day, which is where the majority, if not all of the time changes occur, are you really going to notice a 23 hour day?

[CruzinMermaid]

1 hour ago, zdcatc12 said:

On a sea day, which is where the majority, if not all of the time changes occur, are you really going to notice a 23 hour day?

 

I think it's more losing so much time and having to wake up earlier as opposed to getting all those extra sleep hours.

[judithzuz]

On 2/17/2022 at 9:25 PM, kwokpot said:

I detest the cruiseline's that make the time change in the middle of the day. Princess loves to do that.1pm becomes 2pm and your whole afternoon is off schedule, especially meals. 

hi, I actually read somewhere that this change during the day was done for the crew. This way, their scheduled sleep time was the same every night. I think that's rather considerate. True, the passengers suffer a little, but, hey, we're on vacation.

[Heidi13]

9 hours ago, judithzuz said:

hi, I actually read somewhere that this change during the day was done for the crew. This way, their scheduled sleep time was the same every night. I think that's rather considerate. True, the passengers suffer a little, but, hey, we're on vacation.

 

Affirmative - The clox at Noon is primarily done to make compliance with the crew hours of rest requirements easier, so that pax service is not reduced by having to provide dayworkers an additional hour off.

 

When cloxs change an hour forward every night, you get lots of pax complaining. Hardly hear any complaints when they change at Noon.

[Hlitner]

On 2/17/2022 at 9:25 PM, kwokpot said:

I detest the cruiseline's that make the time change in the middle of the day. Princess loves to do that.1pm becomes 2pm and your whole afternoon is off schedule, especially meals. 

We actually prefer the 1pm change when on East bound crossings (have done a few dozen).  Princess and HAL do it on some or all cruises (we do not know whether this has changed in the past 2 years).   We normally grab lunch around 12:30 and the time change is no biggie since we tend to eat dinner around 8pm.

 

Hank

[CGTNORMANDIE]

Even in the days of five day crossings the time change never bothered us.  23 hour days were a lot better than a 6 hour flight!