This steam has taken much longer than it should have due to continued horrendous weather. The worst waves were on March 6th. After watch on the 6th we played cribbage in the library. Dan, Eric, and I taught Adam how to play. Yvonne watched the waves from the porthole in the library door. Occasionally waves would slam into the port side and splash through the library door. It wasn't a little trickle; it kind of poured in at times. Pete, the bosun, tightened down the dogs, which put a stop to the leaking door. After a couple losses for me, Dan, Yvonne, and I went up to the bridge. Kent, the Chief Mate, was on watch with Lorna. The captain was up there as well. Our desired course was about 290 (with the wind and waves coming from maybe 250), but the ship had to maintain a course of 270 (otherwise we wouldn't reach the station; the wind would blow us too far off). At one point Lorna walked over to the console and said "Kent, something isn't right." I had noticed that we weren't hitting the waves at the same angle. One of the thrusters had cut out and locked with a little angle, so the other one slowly pushed us until we were nearly broadside with the waves, at about 180. Not really a good position to be in with waves this size. The Captain called over the squawk box to the ship to be prepared for some rolls. Kent called down to the engineers to let them know there was a problem and put the remaining thruster into manual to try and bring us into the wind and waves. Everyone seemed rather tense while he was doing this, but for the most part they were all very calm. Kent brought us into the wind and the engineers quickly figured out the problem and we were back on track. It was pretty exciting/nerve racking. It sure is nice to be on a ship with such a competent crew.
The Captain deemed that enough excitement for one day. I stayed around for a while longer. I'd say the average wave size was between 20 and 30 feet. On the whole they weren't huge (not as big as on the last cruise), though at times they'd combine to form a really high peak and subsequently break. We were all standing around watching when a big one formed right off to the port side and directly in front of us. It really looked to be about eye height to me, and the bridge is pretty high. Kent and Lorna ran up to the window and the console, but really there was nothing to be done. We plowed into it. Afterwards, Kent looked at the computer; the ship had measured a 16 meter heave on that wave. It probably wasn't quite that big, but it sure looked huge. The ship track shows all of our course changes to get the best ride and still get to the station. We were going nearly 7 knots and pounding into the waves.
