At Sea

December 29^th, 2024

We are heading north towards Durban, and must be in some sort of shipping lane as we have been overtaking ships all day. It seems that even at 14 knots we are the fastest ship around. On QM2 we would be whizzing past all other shipping, now we just seem to politely overtake them. This speed is good enough for me. It will get us to Durban in the early morning. That’s fast enough.

Despite the fact that we are heading north, the weather is still not that warm. The Spritz and Splash at the pool this morning was a rather quiet affair, and unlike the previous one, so one ended up in the pool. Still there was great food as always

And fun drinks, although I stuck with champagne rather than the fizzy cocktails on offer.

We sat reading by the pool until it was time for team trivia. Not warm enough to swim, but it was certainly pleasant enough to relax out of deck.

The officers joined us for trivia.

It is always fun when they are there, they usually do quite well, but don’t ever get the highest score. I would like to hope that they are very smart people, after all our lives are in their hands on this ship, and that they would beat the rest of us champagne drinking retired world travelers. However, on the other hand, do we really want their minds to be filled with trivial facts when they are meant to be safely navigating us through the Indian Ocean? The other question I have, is why do they always get more popcorn than we do?

We spent the day sailing close to the African coastline, we could see the shore and what looked like white beaches for most of the day. It was a lovely lazy day.

At 5:30 we had another block party. This is such a great idea; you stand in the corridor outside your suite and get to talk to all of your neighbors while you are plied with canapes and rather nasty tasting so called mimosas. I think they must have had rum in them. Nick, the captain and other officers visit each corridor, with Nick playing loud music on a boom box, and they get to greet all of the guests. One of the many great thing about being on deck 5 is that this is the deck where the conversationalists and entertainers live so you can get to meet and chat with them all. Several of our neighbors had disembarked in Cape Town so it was fun to meet the new occupants of the suites close to ours. All in all, I think this is a brilliant idea.

We were bit confused as to whether tonight’s entertainer, Mandy Muden, was a comedian or magician. The write up on her was confusing. Well, it turned out she was both. She was very funny and had some great tricks up her sleeve. We were enjoying the show when she looked into the audience in search of someone to help her with her next piece of magic. Ah ha, she found her next unsuspecting victim, Brian. Somewhat reluctantly he joined her on stage, and he assisted her in her act. I think he did very well. He survived, and it was all great fun. We learned that it is no good avoiding the front row in order to make sure you don’t get singled out to perform. Nowhere is safe!

When we returned to our suite, low and behold there was another gift on our bed. A rather nice-looking duffle bag. That will certainly come in handy!