At Sea

Not in the Tropics yet……..

Last night we received a notification that it was a legal requirement that all passengers attend a safety briefing after 28 days on board, and we were ordered to attend the guest emergency drill in the Royal Court Theater today at 10:00. So armed with our life jackets we headed down there at the appointed time. As we made our way to deck 2 no one seemed to be at all concerned that we were walking around the ship clutching our life jackets, as if it was a normal, everyday occurrence that people keep their life jackets with them at all times just in case you have to suddenly abandon ship.

We sat patiently through the safety briefing, and stood up at the appropriate time to put the jackets on, and of course several people had fun playing with the lights and whistles, others hadn’t a clue what to do and needed assistance from the crew.

I must admit that I thought it was odd that we had the safety briefing 75 days in to our voyage, when it should have been after 28 days. Then we discovered that this wasn’t the first repeat safety briefing on the voyage – there was a previous one that we were not invited to. It is one thing not to invite us to the Senior Officers’ Party, but quite another not to invite us to the compulsory safety briefing. I ask myself; do they want us to go down with the ship?

Armed with the knowledge of how to find our muster station, and put on a life jacket, we then, against Brian’s better judgment, went to sign up for the Float Your Boat competition. I had hoped there would only be 2 entrants as there had been for the previous one, but no, there was a cast of thousands (well maybe 10 or so) of passengers signing up for it. Hugh was there too, and as he reads my blog I cannot give away too much information about our design, but I can say that I have finally found a way to get rid of the duct tape Brian brought on board 75 days ago.

During his noon announcement the Commodore said that there would be an opportunity to do some stargazing from the Lido Deck pool at 10:15 tonight. I like his optimism. It is pouring with rain at the moment, there are dark stormy clouds all around us, with no sign of blue skies anywhere in our vicinity. However, we haven’t seen the Southern Cross at all this trip, and as we head further north day by day it would be great to see it before we go too far.

I stopped by to see Jacqueline and get the latest update on the passengers on board. All cabins are occupied, and we have 1853 passengers, 688 Australians, 136 New Zealanders, 486 from the UK, and 376 from the US. There are a total of 30 different countries represented. It is lovely to have such a mixture of nationalities on board.

We continue to have wonderful speakers. Oceanographer Denny Whitford has been lecturing on Ocean waves, and now I know all you need to know about cat’s paw waves, internal waves, and rogue waves. So I should be able to “read the sea” from my perch in the Commodore Club. John Brinkley has been talking about geothermal energy and volcanoes. He even talked about my 2 favourite volcanoes, Mount St Helens and Rainier. Tomorrow he is going to talk about the volcanoes of Hawaii, very topical as Brian and I plan to go hiking on Kilauea when we stop in Hawaii.

I really think you should be awarded some sort of diploma at the end of the cruise. We have sat through so many hours of lectures, and learned so much from all of the speakers. I can’t remember half of it now, but that’s no different from when I went to University, and I have a certificate from there.

We brought our bottle of Contessa from winning the quiz to dinner, and shared it with Rita to toast the second day of her birthday. It is actually almost drinkable, but only almost. Pavlova was on the menu for dessert, and it wasn’t deconstructed. It was actually perfect, and a great way to end yet another delicious dinner.

We headed up to the unlit Lido Deck after dinner, and miracle of miracles, the clouds had cleared, and there staring at us was the Southern Cross! I was soooooooo excited! The stars were all out in their glory, and we had wonderful time stargazing.

Then it was time for Tonight’s Entertainment. Keith Scott gave a great performance doing impressions of comic characters, politicians, and entertainers. He made the observation that with the exception of one recently elected president, politicians around the world at the moment are a pretty boring bunch, and not worth imitating. However, he did great impressions of several celebrities and politicians of the past and it was a good show.