Today is a “sea day” and the seas are high. It's been rough ever since we left Port Canaveral yesterday. Some say it's as bad as they've ever seen it on this ship.

Things quiet down on the ship when the weather gets rough like this. Many activities are canceled due to the motion of the ship. The rock-climbing wall and the skating rink are both closed today for safety reasons. Guests feel tired or sick, and tend to stay in their cabins more. Sometimes a show is canceled if the danger to the dancers is determined to be too severe, but this hasn't happened yet.

At least, not intentionally.

Last night the dancers made changes in their planned performance to remove some of the riskier elements – fancy twirls or swings and so on. They also cut a couple of the more energetic numbers, one of which being the first number.

We had to rehearse the cut because the show lighting and effects are automated, and changes have to be made to the program automation. The sound and lighting guys take care of this. But there wasn't much time available to rehearse the changes with the orchestra.

The cut affected the orchestra in that we play to a “click track” (a programmable metronome we listen to in headsets) to keep things in sync. When there's a change, like a number being cut, the click has to be changed to start in the right place.

Well, we thought we had it worked out with the sound techs, and listened to the click just before show time so we all new what was happening. We were going to hear a few beats of the previous number's click, then a space when the click stops, and then the new click would start – our cue.

It worked in the headphones during a run-through.

So it's show time, and Kirk, the Master of Ceremonies introduces us with his typical energy and enthusiasm. “Ladies and gentlemen, give it up for the Royal Caribbean Singers and Dancers!”

The click starts in our headphones. And it continues. And continues. That's funny, there's no space - the space we're supposed to wait for to identify the beginning of the new click.

The spotlight follows Sandra, the first singer to appear in this number, out to centre stage. She waits, standing in front of the audience, waiting to begin her number. The band doesn't come in. The band can't come in; if it did, everything would get screwed up and hopelessly out of sync. So we just sat there, listening to the click.

What to do? There are about 1200 people out there watching us do nothing. They don't know anything about a click-track, of course. I felt sorry for Sandra standing out there with egg on her face.

So after what seemed like a very long time, Kirk takes action and leaps out on stage. “Ladies and gentlemen, the Royal Caribbean singers and dancers!”

Sandra walks off sheepishly.

“We apologize. Due to technical difficulties the singers and dancers will not appear in our Welcome Aboard show tonight. You can see them on Tuesday and Thursday in Front Row and Pure Energy. Don't miss them!”

And then he continues on with the rest of the show.

At this point I should say that this was highly unusual. The stage techs here have always been professional, and since I've arrived, all shows have gone without a hitch. But there has never been a requirement to alter any of the shows on short notice during my short time here.

Now, in the “old days”, this would have been trivial. You just tell everyone what's happening, and the conductor conducts accordingly and the lighting guys and other staging people accommodate the changes as they need to. But in these days of automation it's not so easy, Billy.

In fact, without proper rehearsal, last minute changes involving sync and automation will almost certainly result in disaster. As we saw.

Unfortunately for us, computers are neither flexible nor forgiving.