Our day at sea began with overcast skies, 57-degree temps, 12 mph winds, and 82% humidity. As the day progressed, we did see some sun, but there was little heat in it. Once the Zaandam left the sheltered waters of the inside passage, the seas got a bit rougher. Come to think of it, we have had such smooth sailing, that this is the first day that we are experiencing some rolling. It sure did not prevent the newly embarked Neptune guests from attending their first Pinnacle Grill breakfast. Compared to last week, the room was filled with hungry customers.
Last night, all of us received a strange letter regarding the internet onboard. They announced a scheduled system upgrade that would temporarily affect internet access. If we understand this correctly, the internet connections cannot be started during 10pm tonight to Friday the 11th at 6am. The same will occur Friday at 10pm to Saturday at 4am. If you are already connected before 10pm, you will maintain that connection but be unable to reconnect. We hope their upgrade works.
We spent the majority of the day working with photos and reports. It makes it difficult if we fall behind , so a day at sea allows us to catch up. There were scores of activities on the ship like lectures, sports activities, dance lessons, trivia, casino deals, beer and wine tasting, and sales galore. We do not see much difference with the activities on this shorter cruise compared to the grand voyage. There is even a knitter meetup, but it is not associated with the Linus Project. They do offer a watercolor class, which was held 4 different times today. Arts and crafts are not present on this 7-day run.
At high noon, the Captain came on with his update. The bow camera station is so slow to come up on our TV, we missed half of his talk. We did hear that we had over 400 nautical miles to reach Juneau tomorrow. We can expect nice weather once again. Then he reminded us that we will turn the clocks back this evening to be on Alaska time.
We did spot some whale blows on our way north at 2pm, but they were too far in the distance to take pictures.
Lunch for us was late at 3pm with room service. We kept it light because tonight is "dressy" with a nice selection of starters and mains. Both of us had the tomato bisque soup followed by mains of lamb chops with garlic mashed potatoes. The meal was quite good, served hot by our head waiter. We happened to notice that this new group of guests did not dress "dressy" . Last week's folks looked better with a few jackets and a touch of glitter. Since there are only two dressy evenings, it is not a big deal to add a touch of something special. We are not the "clothes" police, but we do object to t-shirts and baseball caps in the dining room. Doubt we mentioned it last week, but we have had the strings of Vivace playing for us in the dining room for one hour. Now that is classy rewarded with much applause.
The clocks went back one hour which suits us just fine. Tomorrow's port will be Juneau with an early morning stop in Tracy Arm for a tour group.
Bill & Mary Ann
