At Sea

February 21^st, 2025

120 people joined the ship in Las Palmas, so this was our first experience of what the ship felt like at capacity. It has never felt empty, even for the first segment of the cruise where we had a very low guest count, but it definitely does feel different now. The new faces seem to be everywhere, I am so used to knowing and greeting everyone, now there are all of these strangers, and although not unfriendly, they don’t seem to want to make eye contact, or acknowledge my smile.

And some are downright difficult. We arrived at team trivia and lo and behold, there was a couple sitting in the seats where our team sits, eating away at the popcorn. I greeted them and then as politely as I could I let them know that the maximum number of people for each team was 10, and our team already had 10 members, but I knew that Rhys would be able to let them know which teams were looking for additional members.

Well, they basically told me that they were there first, and were not prepared to move. This was awkward. The room was not large enough to find another space for 10 people to sit, and it just wouldn’t be right to throw 2 people off our team when we have been together as a team for 85 days. If they continued to sit there I knew that Rhys and Nick would not be happy as it would look like we had 12 folks on our team, even if they were their own team of 2.

I again suggested that they join one of the teams that was looking for new members, but they were not prepared to move. By now half of our popcorn was gone.

Rhys came over to give us the bag with our pencils and I asked him about which teams  would like to have extra members. He said the one right next to ours did, and suggested that the newcomers move to the group next to ours..

This happened as the rest of our team was arriving. We all felt bad that we had asked them to join another team, but we simply couldn’t break the 10 person maximum rule.

Ilise went and got another bowl of popcorn and handed it to them as a peace offering. They rejected it. I suppose you just can’t please all of the people all of the time.

That made me think about how we could have done things better. On previous occasions new team members who had been on Seabourn before and were familiar with the way Seabourn team trivia worked, would go to Nick and Rhys on entering the Club, and ask them if there was a team looking for members, and Nick or Rhys would direct them to the new team. If the people were unfamiliar with Seabourn and with how team trivia works, would usually go over to a team and ask to join. If the team already had 10 members the prospective members would be asked to see Nick and Rhys, who would then direct them to their new team. I never saw any complaints about this.

Our situation was different as the newcomers were already sitting in the group of chairs where our team sits. There was no space for our team to move anywhere else in the Club, and we are a team of 10 friends who love to play trivia together, I really thought the newcomers would understand that asking 2 friends to leave our team so that they  could join us for the final 3 days of trivia was not to much to ask of them. I hope that this didn’t detract from their enjoyment of trivia.

As it turned out our score at trivia today was OK today, about the middle of the pack, but we didn’t do as well as the team the newcomers joined. I hope by the next sea day they will feel happier about things. I hate for people to be unhappy.

Barbara G B Ferguson has been one of our conversationalists for the past few weeks. She has spoken about many varied topics from being a war correspondent, the Sargasso Sea, to stories about olive oil, but today her talk was very different.

Tomorrow we will be in Casablanca. So, in a very timely manner, Babara gave a talk on the movie Casablanca.

Brian is already an expert on the movie, but I was not. I really enjoyed her discussion, and it made me excited about being back in Morocco again.

This evening at dinner we sat at a table hosted by Soso, the head of guest services.

It was a formal night, and we had a special 6 course menu, with a delicious strawberry macaron dessert.

I do love the Seabourn system of hosted tables. It’s not just the senior officers who host tables on formal evenings, on any night you can see so many different people with so many different roles around the ship hosting tables. We have been lucky to be hosted by senior officers, but also by conversationalists, spa staff, and entertainers. It is such fun. We haven’t been hosted by the captain as yet, but there are still 6 more nights to go on the cruise. Fingers crossed!

After dinner we went to listen to piano player extraordinaire Martin Kaye. He is a very high energy performer, and quite exhausting to watch, but most enjoyable.

When we returned to our suite after the show, there was a red rose waiting for us. No specific reason, but just because people like red roses. It was a nice touch. Now we have to pack for our overnight trip in Morocco. Yay!