The day started quite badly, so much to do
and no time left. I was fully packed but couldn't leave dirty dishes etc. My
friend Dudley has a caddy and we had arranged for him to pick me up and then we
would all (6 of us) meet at my mother's house, my daughter Leanne would leave
her car there and we would depart. Dudley came
15 minutes early (I was not ready) and then Leanne (my daughter) started phoning to see where we were.
Frazzled, I locked up and boarded Dudley's
shuttle for the ocean deep. After making a detour back to my home to pick up my
forgotten sun hat we were on our way. Stove was off, alarm was on and car was
locked. Peace reigned at last.
Dudley was dropping us and then travelling to
the airport to pick up his Pretoria
based relatives who were also boarding the Sinfonia - hence Dudley's Shuttle Service!
The last time I had sailed was many moons
ago on a flat bottomed boat. The winds were extremely high and the bay was
choppy. I did not make it out of the harbour before I was hanging overboard
feeding the fishes. I was nervous … but my granddaughter works on board and had
organised the cruise for her family (great gran (my mom), gran (me), her mom
(my daughter Leanne), her dad (Wayne), sister (Carma) and Carma's boyfriend (Kai))
so I couldn't disappoint her. We boarded the back way so missed out on some of
the photos. (Cristen had told them that mom was 90 yrs old so we had a speedy
access to the ship. Our cabins weren't ready yet but fortunately they were next
to each other so we waited in Leanne's while our cabin was got ready. As soon
as we could leave belongings in the cabin we pranced upstairs while the case
fairies did their work and sorted out everybody's luggage. We were lucky that
Cristen was off duty until 1 o'clock so she could get us accustomed to places
on deck. We settled on deck 11 (the pool deck and the most popular place to be)
and waited for the ship to leave the harbour. It was choppy in the bay so I my
nerve function started to work overtime! As we progressed to the harbour mouth
nerves started tingling throughout my body. We passed the harbour mouth
bouncing around quite a bit. I had filled my tummy with lunch on board about an
hour before so I really started worrying. Everyone said "Don't think about
it!" but it's hard not too. We were out of the harbour. Nothing – except I
couldn't walk or stand the ship was always going a different way to where I
wanted to go! Durban
beachfront started disappearing and I realised that if I could survive that
part of the trip I could survive anything and I sat down to receive as much
pleasure input as I could and boy did I go into overload!
Between boarding and night time it was very evident that we were skirting cyclone Guito. Who needs a drink to weave all over the place!
I discovered that I felt a bit nauseous if I sat with my back to the front of the ship so from then on I faced the way we were going whenever in tricky weather conditions (and there were quite a few.)
That first day I could not participate in the dancing on deck because I couldn't walk let alone dance!
After the party we weaved our way to our cabins to get ready for dinner. Wow what a dinner and our waiters were great. After dinner we went to the show which was a dance extravaganza. Brilliant! Then off to our cabin to find the programme for tomorrow waiting for us. I settled mom and then went to play a fun game with Stephen Cloete as our host. Great fun! I ended up in a group of 6 women. Most were great. The game had no correct answers. You scored a point if the majority gave the same answer. The entertainment crew (the Dream Team) were hysterical with the answer they gave!
What a way to start our first day at sea. I wove up to my cabin (deck 9) took my asthma tab and popped my sleeping aid. Slightly woke up with the juddering of the ship as we hit a particularly bouncy bit of sea. But went straight back to sleep again.
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