It’s our last day at sea, and a lovely one. For the first time, they’ve put the cushions out on the deck chairs on the promenade deck – the weather’s been too rough up until now. But today the seas and the wind are gentle, and the sky is (mostly) blue, and I can be out on deck without my scarf tied round my head to protect my ears. So I am sitting out in one of said deck chairs, watching the morning go by.

This is our second Cunard sailing. Our first, as some of our loyal readers might remember, was a 10 night Caribbean cruise in 2008. Our opinion of Cunard after that sailing was decidedly mixed, so I was curious what we would think after this one. However, this time my experience of Cunard was almost completely positive – even though I’d say they are no better at what they do, and in some areas might even be worse. So what’s the difference? The fact that this was a crossing, not a cruise with ports of call.

There are two ways that the crossing immeasurably improved the experience. The first is that, in our experience, what Cunard is worst at, by far, is getting people on and off the ship. So, on a crossing, they only had to do that once (and, as you might recall, do it badly). It remains to be seen how debarkation goes; I don’t have high hopes for it. But once on the ship, all has been lovely. On the last cruise, we were constantly hating people and their rude, awful behavior. Looking back, though, I can see that almost all of that was centered around getting on and off the ship; lining up for shore excursions, everyone coming back from excursions and heading to meals at the same time, etc. With port calls off the table, we all developed our own routines, and got in each others’ way very little. There was still the occasional rude encounter, but they were rare, rather than the rule. In fact, I didn’t hate anyone until last night, which is pretty impressive for me to not hate anybody until the penultimate night of a 7 night sailing!

While we’re on the topic of my anti-social behavior, may I take the opportunity to say that I’ve spoken maybe three words to anybody who isn’t Lis, and it’s been awesome! So much opportunity to just find your own space and hole up in your own head on a crossing. Which, I guess, leads me to the second way that a crossing improves the experience – day after day on a ship in the middle of the ocean is just so zen. On a regular cruise, most days there is a port call, and so a schedule of when to be off and when to get back on, and decisions to make about what to do and what to see. But on a crossing, there’s just the ocean, every day. The ship does provide daily activites, but not a lot, and I don’t do them, anyway (other than blackjack and cream tea, of course).

And so each day it’s just the ocean, which seems like it could be monotonous but is so changeable according to the weather and time of day and quality of light – I keep snapping photos, because each sea scape seems so different and amazing to me. The photos, of course, never really capture it, but I keep trying.

This is another benefit of being on the Queen Mary 2; she is a proper ocean liner, as opposed to a normal cruise ship. It means that she’s built for open waters – specifically, the open waters of the North Atlantic. Crossings in regular cruise ships normally happen farther south – Barcelona to Miami is a typical itinerary – because the weather is better. But, because we’re in a proper liner, we can take the more northerly route, and experience the rougher North Atlantic without being terrified or seasick. We had two storms on our crossing; the first one the second day out of Southhampton, the second one yesterday, and both were exciting to watch. We’d go down to the big windows on deck 2 and make little movies of the swells and spray – so fun, but never scary, as we knew QM2 was built for this.

And speaking of the storms – one thing I learned from my boyfriend’s daily briefing yesterday was the concept of “fetch”, which is the distance that you are from land. The greater (or longer?) the fetch, the higher the swells. This is because the farther you are from land, the more time the wind has to bunch up the water, and so the swells get bigger the longer (or higher?) the fetch. So, in our first storm, the winds were at an 8 (gale force) and the swells were very rough (8-9 meters), because we were 3000 miles from land. In our second storm, conversely, the winds were a stronger 9 (severe gale), but the swells were only rough (I don’t know how tall because my boyfriend never told us) – this, because of the lower (shorter?) fetch, as we were only 500 some miles from land. This is the kind of nerd fest that you can totally give yourself over to on a crossing.

So, anyway, even though I think Cunard has inconsistent food, and sometimes indifferent service, and an awful embarkation procedure, I would wholeheartedly recommend a crossing to anyone, as it is a total zen experience, you can feel like a real sailor, and the QM2 is a truly beautiful ship.