Tuesday March 26^th

Pirate Preparedness Day

My initial task for the morning was to go to the Pursers’ Desk in order to request a new key card. Somehow mine had become misplaced during the sail away. Now I usually do have to have the cards replaced frequently during my cruises for one reason or another, but this was a first. I hadn’t even been on board 5 hours before it was gone.

I needed to leave a note for our cabin steward, Ting. I reached for our Cunard pen, and horrors! It was not a pen but a PENCIL. Standards are really dropping. They didn’t even give us an eraser or pencil sharpener to go with it. I complained to Brian about it, and he pointed out that when he had signed for my wine last night he had been given a regular boring Bic pen. Are those famous Cunard pens a thing of the past now?

Next I tried to sign up for the internet, and noticed that I couldn’t find any information on the embarkation special. I went down to see my trusty internet guy, Adam, to find out what the story was, and he said that they had discontinued the special 6 months ago. Well it was still there when we were on board a few months ago, but who was I to argue, so I headed back up to our cabin muttering to myself the whole way.

There wasn’t much time to dwell on this as we are heading into pirate territory and it was time for our pirate drill. According to the pamphlet we received, during our sea passages between March 26^th and March 30^th either side of Salalah we will be transiting the Gulf of Aden and the Bab el Mandeb. This is apparently an area well documented in the world’s media with regard to the threat from piracy. Therefore, when at sea during this period we will be operating at a higher level of security. We will be routed through an internationally recommended transit corridor and will be under the protection of an international Task Force, assigned by a United Nations mandate to protect merchant ships from a piracy threat. Sounds serious.

The Deck 7 Promenade deck and the outer section of Deck 6 aft will be closed from dusk to dawn (phew, great excuse not to do my evening walk around the Promenade Deck), and during the hours of darkness only essential open deck lights will be switched on so as to reduce the ship’s external lighting.

This all sounds quite sensible, and I am glad that we are taking appropriate measures. Our anti-piracy drill consisted of all the passengers in outside cabins sitting in the corridor outside their rooms, while the inside cabin folks could just wait in their cabins. We had a good time getting to know our neighbors, so it was actually time well spent. Apparently we had stopped early this morning to pick up some guns to arm the safety people on board. The personnel had boarded in Dubai, but were not allowed to have their weapons with them in Dubai– thus the need for them to be delivered this morning. Sort of like Uber Eats for bazookas.

Then it was time to attend the day’s lectures. One thing I don’t like when I attend large conferences is that there are always several talks that I would like to attend going on simultaneously, and I have to decide which one to attend, and this leads to much angst and obsessing lest I chose the wrong one, and I often end up not going to anything.

I had always thought that I would be free from this on a cruise, but sadly it is not so. Today’s schedule was totally jam packed with exciting looking talks and activities – so there were decisions to be made, and disappointments about making the wrong choice and missing something really important. At 11:00 we attended Conrad Humphrey’s talk on his involvement with “the recreation of Captain Bligh’s epic voyage of survival”. It was a good talk, although it was really more on motivation than survival. However, to listen to his talk I missed Morning Trivia, Dr Alan Dowty’s talk on “The Arab World and Islam in History”, a presentation on Arab Calligraphy in Islamic Art, Line Dancing, Social Shuffleboard, and the craft class, the latter being a great disappointment as I totally love doing craft activities. However, even on the magical Queen Mary 2, you can’t be in 7 places at once.

It was then time to drag Brian against his will and better judgment to the Slow Waltz Ballroom Dance class taught by Eugene and Kateryna. It was meant to be a beginner’s class, but clearly everyone else knew what they were doing. We muddled along anyway and did not have any major marital conflicts as we shuffled around the dance floor counting the steps out loud as we moved gracefully in a counter clockwise direction avoiding the other participants in a rather satisfactory way if I say so myself. At the end I was feeling very confident that we could take to the dance floor with ease at tonight’s ball. Brian looked at me as if I was quite delusional, and escorted me to the next activity.

In the afternoon we signed up for the photo scavenger hunt where you have 24 hours to take photos of 9 objects that can be found all over the ship. With our usual amount of competitiveness we immediately set out to find the objects. I was pleased that we knew the ship so well, and we had most of them found in a very short period of time. But where can the missing 2 be? It was very frustrating.

We then went to an excellent lecture given by a naval officer on the pirate situation. He was an eloquent and very entertaining speaker, and there was plenty of time for questions after the presentation. Some of the questions were very appropriate, and concerned issues that had been much on my mind lately. Some were just plain daft.

After our jam-packed day we relaxed on our balcony having our usual sundowners, gazing out to sea with some difficulty as we have a cabin with a lifeboat of sorts out in front of us. Our peace was shattered as the officer of the watch announced that they were going to test the pirate deterring apparatus. And there they were right below us testing it out as I was genteelly sipping away at my champagne. It all felt quite incongruous.

Tonight was the Captain’s Welcome on Board party and the Black and White Ball. In my warped mind I had thought it would be fun to have had a Pirate Ball, but I had to quickly dispose of that totally inappropriate nasty thought, and devote myself to dressing up in black and white.

I love my black and white outfit, picked out for me by my friend Ruth when we were in Las Vegas last year. It has a sparkly top that sheds little bit of glitter everywhere I go. Should I get lost on this grand liner, I will always be able to find my way back to our cabin, although by the end of an evening it would probably be quite a circuitous route. Brian does not share my enthusiasm, as he is not partial to bling on his tuxedo. Well you can’t have everything.

With 1400 passengers embarking yesterday in Dubai the party was quite crowded, but fun as usual. We got to talk with the lovely South African chief doctor, and one of the engineers, and consumed our fill of red wine and bubbly. Captain Hashimi , who also embarked in Dubai, gave a very amusing welcoming speech. I love his sense of humor!

Dinner was excellent – there were still 2 people missing from our table so I suggested to our waiter that we make it a table for 6 instead of 8 which would make conversation a little easier, but apparently hope springs eternal that the other couple will show up, so we remain as we are. Six people around a table designed for 8 to 10 does not work that well, but we are in a good position on deck 2 right next to a window so if they didn’t close the curtains at night and it wasn’t dark, we would be able to look out at the waves below us.

We decided to go to the production show – it is a new one for us, called “Be our Guest”. The singers and dancers were excellent, the lead singers being much better than on recent cruises. The band also did a very good job with the music, but I really didn’t like the costumes so I wouldn’t say it was one of the best shows we have seen.

I had been hoping for a slow waltz at the ball this evening, but it didn’t happen. Not to worry there are loads more gala nights to come, so dancing isn’t out of the question. There is also ample opportunity to dine at the captain’s table. He clearly didn’t want us there tonight, but the cruise is yet young. Maybe the magic invitation will be waiting for us one day in the near future…….