On Saturday 7th Nov we started our holiday aboard Cunard's Queen Victoria
(big, beautiful, cosy) in fine weather at Southampton although there were
some bits of Cb about over The Channel. The forecast charts suggested an
interseting passage down to Biscay.

We went to bed about 2230 to moonlight and negligible seaa but sometime in
the small hours of Sunday we were woken by odd noises and a bit of movement.
I pulled back the curtains and, with some difficulty, opened the balcony
door to be greeted with the sight of sheets of spray blasting by. Now we
were on Deck 8 which means we were roughly 20 metres above the waterline!

Well we were soon asleep again until around 0600 Sunday when a big thump was
followed by a periodic whistle/shriek. I tracked that down to air being
sucked out of the tightly shut balcony door; the Master had finally changed
course from roughly WNW into the seas, to SSW towards Spain so the wind came
from square on the beam.

Later intelligence was that most traffic near Ushant was hove to and we had
exprienced the biggest waves in the ship's two-year life at 13 metres.

The return two weeks later on the 22nd and 23rd were again fierce (F9 to
F10) but the swell was much less exciting.

I look forward to having time to find the official SHIP obs (GBQV?).

P.S. We found quite a lot of fog (in F0 to F1 airs) in the Mediterranean off
the Algerian coast which came as a surprise to me.

--
Rodney Blackall (retired meteorologist)(BSc, FRMetS)
Buckingham, ENGLAND
Using Acorn SA-RPC, OS 4.02 with ANT INS and Pluto 3.03j

"Rodney Blackall" wrote in message
...
On Saturday 7th Nov we started our holiday aboard Cunard's Queen Victoria
(big, beautiful, cosy) in fine weather at Southampton although there were
some bits of Cb about over The Channel. The forecast charts suggested an
interseting passage down to Biscay.

We went to bed about 2230 to moonlight and negligible seaa but sometime in
the small hours of Sunday we were woken by odd noises and a bit of
movement.
I pulled back the curtains and, with some difficulty, opened the balcony
door to be greeted with the sight of sheets of spray blasting by. Now we
were on Deck 8 which means we were roughly 20 metres above the waterline!

Well we were soon asleep again until around 0600 Sunday when a big thump
was
followed by a periodic whistle/shriek. I tracked that down to air being
sucked out of the tightly shut balcony door; the Master had finally
changed
course from roughly WNW into the seas, to SSW towards Spain so the wind
came
from square on the beam.

Later intelligence was that most traffic near Ushant was hove to and we
had
exprienced the biggest waves in the ship's two-year life at 13 metres.

The return two weeks later on the 22nd and 23rd were again fierce (F9 to
F10) but the swell was much less exciting.

I look forward to having time to find the official SHIP obs (GBQV?).

P.S. We found quite a lot of fog (in F0 to F1 airs) in the Mediterranean
off
the Algerian coast which came as a surprise to me.

--
Rodney Blackall (retired meteorologist)(BSc, FRMetS)
Buckingham, ENGLAND
Using Acorn SA-RPC, OS 4.02 with ANT INS and Pluto 3.03j



Rough forecast Rodney? I hope you're not going to start knocking people
about, however if you are can you satrt with Dawltosh. Sorry Paul couldn't
resist it.