High Seas or Rough Seas!!

Last weekend we headed off onboard Cruise & Maritime’s ‘Marco Polo’ ship for our annual Christmas Conference.

I love going to conference as working from home you only speak to colleagues so lovely to meet up and spend time with them.  We always have a really good time.

We sailed from Avonmouth Port in Bristol on Sunday 16th December for 3 nights heading to Dublin for an overnight stay, the ship left at 12 pm so an early start to get there and checked in.  I shared a cabin with my friend & colleague Teresa, we had a premium outside on deck 7 which was lovely, quite spacious and plenty of storage. We were in cabin 447.

We had a quick breakfast then headed to our cabin to get our life vests for the muster drill.

We had the conference in the afternoon after lunch in the theatre ‘Marco Polo Lounge’ located on deck 8 forward.  Various cruise lines joined us to do presentations over the 3 days so we are always learning and always in a fun way at the conference.

The first night was our traditional Fancy Dress night and this years theme was Movie Characters over the last 100 years – there were some great outfits and a great night was had by all. Myself and my team dresses as ‘Pink Ladies’ & ‘T Birds’ from Grease!

Me & my colleague Mark.

Here are a few of the other costumes including the ‘BEST’ one….

This was the BEST – Teresa as Mrs Brown!

The crossing over on the first day was a bit choppy and a few people felt the sway of the ship as it is a small ship so you could really feel it move. We were pleased the ship was docked in Dublin overnight. Coming home was so much worse as the weather was bad.  The captain announced for people not to wear high heels and to take tablets if you suffer as high winds and up to 10ft waves expected from approx 3 pm to midnight.  I have never been seasick in over 12 years of cruising so I thought ‘I’ll be fine’ – nope I wasn’t.  Man down from about 4.30pm and missed the last night as stayed in the cabin being very unwell.

I did a video a bit of the sailing but it did get much worse than this, but take a look…

I will cover Dublin and more on the ship next time.

Until then – Happy Cruising &  A very Merry Christmas!!