Once we were bound for the western Caribbean out of Baltimore on the Grandeur of the Seas. When we turned south around Cape Hatteras we ran into 30 ft. waves that gave us an experience not unlike what the P&O ship in the article had off New Zealand. Close to a hundred bottles of liquor fell on the floor and broke, furniture slid and tumbled, and the buffet was closed as they couldn't keep food in the steam trays. Literally thousands of dishes broke.
The other DrC and I were some of the few passengers who weren't seasick, and we didn't do much eating. The Captain slowed down to maybe half normal speed, and we ran so late we had to blow off a port call in Miami. Twenty-four hours later you'd have never known it happened and the rest of the cruise was fine.
Another time, around Cape Horn on the Norwegian Crown, the seas were so rough they had to tie closed the doors to the promenade deck. And on a crossing of the Drake Passage to Antarctica in the MS Andrea I looked out our cabin's porthole and saw not foam, but green water - either the waves were that high or we'd rolled over that far, I was never sure. The Drake Passage isn't for sissies.
You might think the Mediterranean, being enclosed, would be smooth sailing. Most of the time you'd be right. However they get so-called "rogue waves" off the eastern coast of Spain and off the western coast of Italy. Some of these are dangerous. We boarded the Grand Princess in Civitavecchia and the night before she'd run into a couple of "rogue" waves that had, among other things, broken windows 7-8 stories above the waterline. She'd also lost power and sat dead in the water for a half hour before getting underway.
Here's a little known cruising fact. The first day out of San Pedro, the port of Los Angeles, the water is usually rough, whether you're cruising south to the Mexican Riviera or west to Hawaii.
Cruising is wonderful, most of the time. Every now and then it gets more exciting than you'd like.
