Well, we wish everyone a very Happy April Fools' Day, although we are a day early. And as always, we did expect the Daily newsletter to be printed differently with articles upside down, or a fun scavenger hunt, a bar hop, and even a costume party and contest. Their ad flyer that came with the Daily newsletter featured HAL's first cruise into space….really? How about free huge chocolate diamonds for the first 50 folks from Effy's? Not going to happen. And a special event….a Lido aft parasailing adventure saying get your fix of adrenaline as you fly high on this adventure. Wonder how many people showed up to do it? But, we do feel that they have taken things a bit too far, which we will address later on.
Anyway, we are finally making progress catching up with delayed reports and photos from the last week or more. Keeping busy has made these sea days go by in a flash. Half of the six day stretch is behind us already. We have to take turns with the one computer we have, so while one of us is typing, the other can take a long walk on the promenade deck. Today he came back with stories of seeing fewer flying fish along with much warmer and humid weather.
By the way, we need to make a correction regarding the crossing of the Equator. Misunderstanding the Captain, the predicted crossing will be today around 4pm, not this morning at 4am. Checking out the TV map on deck two this morning, there was a line that we mistook for the Equator. So we assumed we had crossed it, but we had not. When we heard the noontime horn blow, we always make it a point to take notes on the details provided by the Captain. However, someone else was speaking in his place. Oh yeah, it's the April Fools' thing again. The Captain finally took the mike, saying he just came from the parasailing adventure at the Seaview Pool. Just kidding. So we have sailed 1840 nautical miles since leaving Walvis Bay. The Zuiderdam is maintaining the speed of 21 knots and are in seas that are 12,956 feet deep. The skies are mostly sunny with a gentle breeze with six foot swells. The air temperature is 83 degrees, while the sea temps are warmer with 87 degrees. The sunset would be 6:53pm and the sunrise will be 6:56am. It is always the same at the Equator – equal amount of daylight and the same with darkness.
The Captain spoke of days of pranks on the high seas with real stories surrounding April 1st. It was a little bit of trivia of strange happenings that left us to think maybe the King Neptune Ceremony should not have been cancelled. We may be doomed……..
The best highlight of the day was a surprise of a whale sighting right from our veranda. We happened to go outside around 2:30pm to see a whale blowing in the distance. Sure enough it was slowly going the opposite way as we flew on by it. Not a huge whale, we think it may have been a minke whale. They are one of the species that are in these waters. Hoping to see a pod, we watched for an hour but never saw any more. The best thing was the good camera was right here within reach to catch the whale briefly before submerging. We could time the blows by 5 to 10 seconds as it skimmed the surface. If there was an announcement about seeing whales earlier in the day, we never heard it.
So here's the thing about pushing the envelope with April Fools' Day. When we went to the dining room for a casual dinner, we found that the maitre'ds and the wait staff were dressed in costume -mode. Not the special event clothes they used to wear, but uniforms from the engine room, the deck crew, and the painters and scrubber team. When we see these real hard working crew members, they are dirty from scraping paint, prepping to paint, painting, and greasing the tenderboat launching mechanisms for instance. These uniforms are never clean as they should be, but do they belong in the dining room even if they are clean? We think not. Maybe in the Lido, but not here. Our waiters were dressed much nicer with a front desk tie and beige vest and a buffalo plaid shirt they wear in Alaska once a week. We let them know they won the prize for best-dressed. They got what we were saying. Enough said……
There was a one-time specialty dinner in the Pinnacle Grill called Jellicle, where nothing is what it seems and nothing is in order. Very different. We are curious if the April Fools' costume party occurred in here too? We shall investigate tomorrow.
Our dinner was good with Caesar salads, a shrimp cocktail with a very hot cocktail sauce ….a little too much horseradish. One of us had chicken noodle soup with extra tiny noodles upon request. Mains were a small portion of prime rib, and a smallish lasagna. Dessert for one of us was pineapple sorbet – one scoop. Even though the menu was printed with funny stuff, the food was the usual fare.
The entertainer this evening was Abbie Jordan, the vocalist that is part of the FantaSea group from the Ocean Bar. Now that's a switch for a change.
Bill & Mary Ann
