At Sea

February 6^th, 2025

A sunny day at last. We are clearly away from the treacherous Skeleton Coast, and now in the pirate infested Gulf of Guinea. Well, it’s not pirate infested as such, but the risk does seem to be out there.

In today’s daily program, the Herald, we read that at 10:00 there would be a team member Piracy Safety Drill. There would be no guest participation, and the alarms would be sounded for exercise purposes only.

Sure enough, at 10:00 Nick announced that the alarms would be sounded for exercise purposes only. I was glad that the whistle was part of the alarm as I love to hear it. It wouldn’t scare any pirates away though. It is a bit wimpy.

Then Nick announced that all crew members AND guests should leave any open decks and outside rooms and go to the nearest inside corridor outside our suites and sit there waiting for further instructions.

This was confusing. Should we as guests actually be involved? That would not be surprising as when we have had similar drills on Queen Mary 2 the guests have had to go to the corridor outside their stateroom, but the Herald clearly said that we would not be involved. Furthermore, should we go to the nearest corridor which would be deck 10 for those of us in the Observation Bar, or deck 5 outside our suite? We made a move towards the corridor, but then Nick announced that actually the guests were NOT involved, so we headed back to the Observation Bar.

It is a good thing we did not have to sit in the corridors – I know I would not have an easy time getting up after sitting on the floor for a while, and looking around at the other passengers on the ship, this would not be an easy task for them either. It was a good job that we didn’t have to be involved.

We could continue to sit in the Observation Bar and observe the folks outside with their binoculars and incredibly long camera lenses searching the ocean for any sign of wild life. Alas, there didn’t seem to be anything of interest out there. I would have loved to see a whale, but we haven’t seen anything at all since we left Walvis Bay, just evidence that birds had been by judging by the white splodges on the outside deck.

We returned to our suite before team trivia and low and behold our towel elephant had been miniaturized. Great, that meant he took us less space.

But what is this – a new towel creature has appeared!

The question is, what is it? I took the photo to team trivia to see if any of our teammates knew what it was. Alas, they were as dumbfounded as we were. Is it a bird? A dinosaur? A camel? Any ideas? It remains a mystery to us.

Although you are only allowed to have dinner at Solis once a week, a friend had somehow managed to get another booking, so we were there again. Just as I had decided what I wanted to eat based on the menu of a couple of days agi, it turned out they have a new menu. Still, they have lobster now, so no complaints.

The bread rolls are my downfall, especially as you have aside choice of what you would like to have on the roll. Yummy!

The entertainment tonight was a comedian, Ralph Harris.

After the show we stopped by the Observation Bar to sit on the bar stools, have a chocolate martini, and  listen to Robert on the guitar. It was a perfect way to end the evening.