At Sea

December 10^th, 2024

Today we crossed the magnetic equator. What is this you may ask? Well, I must admit I had never thought about it before. Luckily there was a write up on it in the Herald.

Another name for it is the aclinic line. Unlike the geographic equator, which is a fixed line, the magnetic equator shifts over time and traces a path where the earth’s magnetic field lies perfectly horizontal. At this line, a compass needle would sit level, neither tilting towards the magnetic north or south poles.

When Captain Hamish told us all about it in his noon announcement, he  sounded very excited that today we will be going around in a circle to calibrate the compasses or something. It all sounded very intriguing..

We are still a few days away from crossing the geographic equator. It will be interesting to see what Seabourn does in terms of a crossing the line ceremony.

I had been hoping that there would be a choir on board, and yes indeed there will be one, sort of. The Christmas decorations will soon be arriving, and there will be carol singing. This is where the choir will come in.

We will sing 2 Christmas carols.

Well of course I signed up. It wouldn’t be at all like singing Jerusalem or Rule Britannia, but at least it will be singing.

We had our first rehearsal today. Despite the fact that Nick gave a very clear explanation of what was happening, some folks didn’t seem to get the concept, and much time was spent with Nick trying hard to explain all about it again and again.

Then we started singing and the questions started again. It was a miracle we actually got anything done. Confusion reigned supreme.

We eventually did manage to sing the 2 carols and decide on who was going to be singing solos. It was all rather chaotic, I hope we will be more organized for our performance a mere 2 days away.

The talks today were all great, and our team did OK at trivia. The cruise staff produced a very entertaining Liars Club in the afternoon, so yet again it was a very full day. You certainly couldn’t get bored on a sea day.

Dinner was at Solis. The atmosphere there is great and I love the room.

Finally the Seabourn 6 put on a great show.

We lose an hour tonight. There was a little card on our beds letting us know that, but I do miss the QE2 cards requesting that we “retard our clocks”. I wonder how many people have clocks on board these days.