At Sea

December 25^th, 2024

Seeing as we are at sea on Christmas Day in the morning, I was hoping to see 3 ships go sailing by. As I was getting ready to face the day I heard the sad sound of our foghorn. Well, that probably meant we wouldn’t see any ships go sailing by this morning. True enough when I looked outside, we were in dense fog.

Here we are making our way through the strong Benguela Current in a fog bank just off the Skeleton Coast, named for the shipwrecks that occur there. Happy Christmas!

It continued to be very foggy all day. Usually when it is foggy in the north Atlantic the ocean is totally calm. Not so here – we have fog and a heavy swell, so the ship is rolling and pitching quite a lot. This is uncomfortable for some, but I love it.

The questions for trivia were Christmas focused again. We didn’t think we would star today, but surprisingly enough we were the only team to get a near perfect score! The final question was to name Santa’s original 8 reindeer. We got the names of 7, but didn’t get the 8^th one alas, so we missed out on 10 points. One of the questions was “what day of the week was Christmas in 2020?” It was a Monday in case you are ever asked the same question. The challenge for our team was to work out what day of the week it was today.  Once we had established that it was most likely to be a Wednesday, we could do the calculation.

Christmas lunch was a special treat. The food and beverage staff put together a totally amazing Galley Market Lunch.

As we entered the galley we were greeted with vodka.

We then made our way around the galley piling up our plates with the most delicious delights.

Garlic anyone?

Or how about a pomegranate?

It was fun to take a peek out of one of the portholes. It reminded me of the days when our cabins used to have portholes, and not the fancy balconies of today.

Great seafood!

It was quite a fantastic feast. Seabourn outdid themselves again! As we were finishing our desserts (crepes Suzette and crème caramel for me), there was a parade of kitchen staff. Normally I am a bit underappreciative of the parade of chefs on other cruise lines where everyone waves their napkins in the air, but somehow it really was appropriate to show our appreciation to all of the galley staff who had made this meal so special.

In the afternoon I did something I haven’t done in a while. I decided to give the afternoon activities a miss and have a nap. It was cold and foggy outside, the foghorn was still sounding every 2 minutes, and the ship was rocking and rolling. Climbing under the bed covers for a few hours sounded too good to miss. I was suddenly feeling quite tired. Maybe the excessive amount of food I had consumed together with the champagne played a role in my sudden desire to sleep. In no time at all I was lost in a deep slumber.

I woke up in time to get all dressed up in my red gown and head out to enjoy a formal night on board. It was great to see so many guests elegantly attired for the night’ activities. The evening started with another performance from Panos Karan, Christmas at the symphony.

Then we were eating again, another festive meal. I won’t need to eat for another month after today. It was a fun evening.

Having been silent for the past few hours, as I was getting ready for bed, the foghorn started up again. I was ready to be rocked to sleep once more……..