April 18^th

At Sea

It was another bumpy night, just the sort I love, and we awoke to a Force 8 gale and rough seas. However the sun was shining so we thought we would go to the Pavilion Pool, and I could have a swim.

No such luck, there were no available loungers, so we decided to retreat to our usual place, the Commodore Club. There were no seats by the windows, but we did at least find seats. It really is quite rough today, and you can certainly feel the motion of the ocean. If we were on Queen Elizabeth now the waves would be splashing over the Commodore Club windows. Instead we are doing a fair amount of pitching, and our bow plunges downwards, but no water splashes up here.

At his noon announcement Captain Hashmi said the winds will be dying down and the 7-meter waves will be a thing of the past. Although we will continue to follow the Great Circle Track until 6:30 this evening, we are currently on a southerly course skirting the ice fields to the north of us. At 10:00 tonight we will be 90 miles south of where the Titanic was when she hit the iceberg. I looked out the window, no icebergs in sight at the moment.

Captain Hashmi reminded us that it was 50 years ago today that Cunard took ownership of the QE2 at John Brown shipyard. It’s hard to believe it’s that long ago.

I opted for lunch in the Carinthia Lounge. The light lunch there is just the thing after a big breakfast. However, it is often difficult to find a seat there now. Very different to when it was the Winter Garden. The change really is a huge improvement. The down side is that you used to be assured of finding a quiet place to sit and read in the Winter Garden. Now it is always full and quite noisy. I am OK with that.

I only went to 2 talks today, I’m busy with my craft project.

The first was by Julian Woolford, entitled “Climb Ev’ry Pyramid”. It was about the challenge of putting on a production of “The Sound of Music” in Egypt. I have to hand it to him, I certainly would have given up with all of the obstacles they had to face, including digging a pit in the sand for the orchestra. He also included some of the history of the show. It was as always very entertaining, and I enjoyed it.

Captain David Henderson gave a talk on “Is there a Doctor in the House – or on the Aircraft?” He included a clip from the trailer for the movie “Airplane”, which has to be one of the silliest movies ever made. I was compelled to order it from Netflix when we get home. It certainly deserves to be seen again.

Brian picked up the sheet for the final photo scavenger hunt of this trip, and off we headed around the ship to find the 9 objects for today’s hunt. 7 were fairly easy (I’m not sure if it’s a good or bad thing that we know this ship so well), 1 was a challenge, but we found it, but 1 was very elusive. I had never seen the object before, so it was very frustrating, and we searched the ship deck-by-deck, lift-by-lift, room-by-room, but it vain. It simply did not exist.

We could not believe that we had failed in our mission, not to mention spent hours on our fruitless search. Still, with all of that exercise we didn’t need to feel guilty about not walking around the Promenade Deck today (not that we could have as it was closed due to the wind). Then the lad who goes to the gym once or twice every day had an inspiration. Could it be in the Gym? Well as I have never even set foot in the gym, how would I know? We were quite weary, but it was worth a look. Yes there it was, right by the entrance. You didn’t even have to venture far in to that establishment. Mission accomplished!

During our frantic search for the missing item we popped in to the Board Room. It looks like there will be a wedding there today – they thought of everything, there was even a box of tissues at the entrance.

When we were leaving the dining room after dinner we came across the newly installed Easter display. The 2-headed egg is rather strange and unnerving. The other eggs were quite acceptable.

There was a 70s and 80s dance party with Purple Haze playing in the Queens Room tonight. Purple Haze took over from the previous band Solutions. It was good to see the Queens Room and the dance floor packed with happy partygoers, and we joined the throng.

On other ships there have been twist and hoola hoop competitions, which we often won. Not on Cunard, alas.

I am resigned to the fact that I may never get Brian to engage in ballroom dancing. However, if the band plays a pop song we can bob to, he will reluctantly take to the dance floor. So we danced the night away.