At Sea

Not quite in the tropics yet.

At noon the Commodore announced that we had sailed 17,332 miles since we left Southampton, and have 364 miles to go to Pitcairn. The depth of water under our keel is 3,190 meters. We are 98 miles away from Ducie Island. This is a small uninhabited atoll with a central lagoon filled with poisonous fish and evil sharks. No wonder it is uninhabited.

There are currently 1812 passengers on board, 856 men and 956 women. The majority are from the UK, 990, with 250 Australians and 71 New Zealanders. There are only 187 of us from the US. I really though there would be more. There are 31 different nationalities on board, and 31 passengers are from “unknown”. One wonders why the Pursers Office, who is holding all of our passports, has not worked out where each passenger is from. It reminds me of when our eldest son was born in Chicago, the registration clerk needed his father’s place of birth for his birth certificate. Illinois did not have Zimbabwe or Rhodesia in their database, so the clerk asked me if it would be OK if she put Zambia down as his place of birth. I said no, because he wasn’t born in Zambia. So for his father’s place of birth, the certificate says “rest of the world”, which sounds like a cricket team to me.

Having been away for over 7 weeks I decided that it was time I weighed myself, so I did something I don’t usually do, I went to the gym which is where the scale resides. My visit was not entirely successful. The scale ended up giving 5 different readings – 3 unfavorable, 2 favorable. I decided that the scale was not functioning properly. Maybe it was because the ship was pitching a bit, who knows. I was no more informed about my state of adiposity that I had been before stepping on it.

We missed all of the talks this morning, but were able to watch them in the cabin later. Tomorrow we will stop at Pitcairn (“cruise by”). Easter Island and Pitcairn sounded fascinating when we learnt about them at school, and I never ever thought that I would get to see them up close. James, who had done such an excellent job talking about Easter Island, gave a very informative talk on Pitcairn – “Pitcairn Island – Paradise Lost?” and Alan Dowty gave a talk on “The Incredible Story of Pitcairn Island”. They both really brought the amazing history of the island to life. There is so much more to it than simply where the mutineers from the Bounty settled.

We met up with Adam, the Internet expert, for pre dinner drinks in the Commodore Club. It is always great to get to talk with him, and get an update on what’s happening on the ship. I mean, who knew that there was to be a crew hen party tonight. It sounded like it would be fun. He also talked about how when they were in Norway some of the officers went fishing, and the chef’s prepared the fish for their dinner that night. It sounded like a great meal. I do feel sorry for him. He is always blamed for the fact that the Internet is so slow, like he himself is personally controlling the speed of our downloads. He is also bombarded with really esoteric questions that he does his best to answer, but some times there simply is nothing he can say, and the passengers criticize him for this. Not an easy job, but he loves it.

Instead of going to the main dining room we decided to try the “Dining out on Deck” dinner option, as they were providing it again tonight. We couldn’t make a booking, but only had to wait about 10 minutes for a table. The tables were near the Lido Pool, and had red checked tablecloth, soft lighting, and candles. Ferry Bedi played romantic music on the piano. I love dining out under the stars, and it was a great experience. The meal consisted of Spanish tapas, and they were selling pitchers of Sangria. Alas Sangria is not part of Brian’s low carb diet so we had to give it a miss. We were joined by Deidre and Kim, and had a great evening. It is a fantastic feeling being out in the warm South Pacific night, at the back of a beautiful ship, eating delicious food served by very efficient waiters. The Commodore and his wife, Julie, were there too, so it was clearly the place to be! Just as we were finishing there was an absolute downpour. Luckily we were sitting under the sun cover so we stayed dry, others were not quite so lucky.

We then dashed to see the magician, Brett Sherwood. We decided to sit at the front to get a good view of his act. He was very, very good. Things really did come and go like magic. In one of his card tricks, as we were near the front, he asked us to check that the cards were indeed a full pack of unmarked cards. We had a close look at the cards, and they did seem to be perfectly normal. He then asked Brian to pick a card, and sure enough Brett identified the correct card. We had just seem the cards, Brian had put his card back in the pack and shuffled the cards, so it was incredible that he was able to identify the right card. We were impressed.

So with our romantic dinner under the stars, and an excellent show, it really was a “magical” evening.