Report # 79 Sailing Towards Victoria, Seychelles March 18, 2014 Tuesday Partly cloudy, 85 degrees, hot but nice breeze

It was a good thing that we had a lazy day at sea. With putting the clocks back three hours in the last seven days, all of us have noticed how much it has set off our body time clocks. It is not unusual to hear someone say they have been awake at 4 am, tired all day, and falling asleep before dinnertime. When you think about it, our dinnertime at 8 pm was in reality 11 pm one week ago. No wonder we're dragging...... The bad thing about this is that the cold bug has begun to make its rounds again, spreading among the crew and passengers. Perhaps the cold is better than getting the NORO virus, which thankfully has not hit us on this trip, as far as we know.

There was a nice breeze blowing today, and made for a much more comfortable walk on the lower deck today. Bet the security guards are appreciating this, since they have been on 24 hour watch since we left Sri Lanka. Standing at the railing in the hot sun can be torture, we are sure. The only upside is that they can watch for the many sightings of dolphins and perhaps some tuna. We did see a few pods of them jumping in the water, but not really close. The only other sealife we spotted were flying fish and one bird, a masked booby. Funny, just one.

This morning the Captain announced that they had seen something suspicious bobbing in the water. Checking it out, they found it was a stray buoy wound with seaweed. They are not ruling out anything that they see floating out here, since you never know if it might have come from a plane wreckage.

The day's activities continued as usual with talks from Melvin all about whales, and Brian, speaking about Indian civil services. Another popular activity was a cooking demo of chilled melon soup and curried shrimp, followed by chocolate souffle. These are some items from the Le Cirue menu in the Pinnacle Grill.

After finishing our books at the aft pool, we headed down to watch a movie and eat lunch. Going to the Lido sandwich bar, we ordered one roast beef sandwich and one tuna sandwich with chips to go. It is more fun to eat in our room. Even though we saw the movie, Mud, we watched it again because it was a good story. We did want to watch Barbara H's talk on the Seychelles, but it runs every three hours, alternating with the two speaker's lectures. We seldom hit the time right. Perhaps her talks should be on a separate channel.

We have been getting in a second walk around the lower deck at 5 pm. Several different groups of folks have begun to get together daily on sea days to drink wine or beer there at that time. It's nice, because the sun has been setting early and the sunsets are becoming better and better every day. Our rountine can find us checking out the dinner entrees in the Lido, then going up to deck nine to watch the sun go down behind the clouds. There are a handful of us up there also every night.

We had company for dinner. Our host, Tom M. and Maureen, our crafts teacher joined us. Barb was missing, because as a President's Club member, she and the 19 other members, had been invited to a special Italian dinner in the Canaletto, which was closed to everyone else this evening. The big draw to this meal was the promise of wines, that would compliment each course. We had hoped she would join our table by dessert time, since they started at 6:30pm, but we never did see her. With all that wine, we are certain the group lingered far beyond the normal dinnertime. We did have a special order dessert........slices of Mississippi mud pie. She'll be sorry.....

There was an early show at 7:30pm with the Irish comedian Paul Brogan. Keith and Margaret has attended and said he was just as good tonight as he was last night. The regular show after dinner was a performance by the British group, Journey South.

We will be arriving to the Seychelles tomorrow, but not until 3pm. Overnighting in port, we will have the following day to see the town.

Sun going down around 6:08pm

Very cloudy on the horizon