Gimbal / Monopod Use With Long Lenses

Long lenses are many things, including heavy, expensive, and hard to hand-hold. A tripod and full gimbal head is likely the way to go, as I've written about here before. But, sometimes a tripod isn't the right tool for a particular situation, and one of those is when shooting from the deck of a ship.
Funny thing is, I used both full and side-mount gimbal heads in the past, and also monopods, but never the two together. What got me thinking was that in about a week from when this ie being written in mid-January, 2015, I will be going to Antarctica to help Kevin and a fantastic group of instructors conduct two back-back week-long workshops.
These will be my fifth and sixth Antarctic cruises and consequently I know that I will want to spend a lot of time on the deck of the ship, as I have in the past, shooting the wildlife and passing landscape. On these upcoming trips I'll be using the new Tamron 150-600mm on the also new Sony A7II. Coupled by a Sony LE-A4 adaptorthis Sony A moun...