At Sea

It continues to be rough out there. Still not transatlantic caliber, but enough for the ship to be bouncing along quite a bit. I was at the talk on the San Andreas fault (preparation for our visit to Southern California) in the Royal Court Theater and it felt a like I was on a rollercoaster, albeit a very small one.

The rough weather is expected to continue until about 6:00 tonight. They have opened up the starboard side of deck 10 (a big sigh of relief was heard from the smokers, as this is where they can go to smoke), and the Lido pool deck, but the other decks and both pools are still closed due to the weather. There have not been any really big waves however, nothing breaking over the bow or splashing on the windows of the Commodore Club. There is a great photo, taken I think from QE2 during a tandem transatlantic crossing, where it looks like QV is taking a nose dive right into the water with her bow submerged. Nothing like that happening today.

My current craft project is a bag for my video camera. I am learning how to do Japanese quilting. It is quite easy, but up in Hemispheres, where the craft sessions are held, there is so much movement of the ship that it is quite a challenge to keep the needle under control. Poor Kate, who runs the sessions, gets terribly sea sick, so I really feel sorry for her trying to teach us unruly bunch of women. We are all too set in our ways, and get quite annoyed when she demands that we unpick something. She is a perfectionist. We are not in general, though there are those who are, and they remind me of those annoying girls at school who always did everything right, and never had ink all over their uniforms.

Deidre and Kim had a soiree in their cabin, which was tremendous fun. There were 11 of us at the party, and there certainly was room enough for everyone. I do feel that 12 is the maximum number of people for a soiree in an average Britannia cabin, although you could get 4 more on the balcony if needed. Next week Dan and Irene will be hosting a soiree in their Queens Grill Q4. We will see what the maximum capacity will be there. Deidre always has such interesting friends and we were having such a good time we nearly missed dinner. Couldn’t do that – Rita would be most put out if we didn’t show up.

After dinner it was Commodore Club time again – sitting back and listening to Carlo on the piano as the ship bounces her way to Hawaii. There is something so special about that experience, I want to hold onto that feeling forever.