Subject: FW: Report # 17 Sailing Towards Nuku Hiva January 16, 2016 Saturday Partly cloudy, rain & 83 degrees
Report # 17 Sailing Towards Nuku Hiva January 16, 2016 Saturday Partly cloudy, rain & 83 degrees
Well, rain sure was not in the Captain's forecast, but it is here anyway. It remains extremely muggy, and we seem to have a following wind. The Captain explained yesterday, that once we dipped below the Equator, we picked up a current that is helping us maintain a speed over 19 knots. That is good because we still have several more days at sea before arriving to the Marquesas, and the folks are getting restless. And, oh my gosh, the chefs are running out of fresh berries. The first to disappear were the blackberries, and raspberries. The whole strawberries became halved, then quartered, then gone. Doubt we see any now until we arrive to Papeete, when we get a big delivery to replenish the supplies. In the meantime, we still have plenty of blueberries and ripe bananas. Sure makes breakfast a pleasant way to start the day.
We took the opportunity to straighten out some misunderstanding concerning the delivery of champagne to our room, a President's Club perk. Seems that some of us have fallen through the cracks, and were not on the list at the beginning of this cruise. Making inquiries from the chain of command, we started with the rep of the Mariner Society onboard. Still no luck. She asked us to deal directly with the beverage managers. Still no dice. So after four days, we decided to go to the man in charge of all departments, Henk, the hotel director. He was unaware of this, and took care of the deliveries within ½ hour. The bottles of bubbly are no longer MIA. On previous trips, this has never happened. Perhaps it was a computer-related problem, who knows.
Have we mentioned that there are at least seven kids on this cruise? They range in age from one to pre-teen. We have seen the little ones with their grandparents and mom. Seems so strange to see strollers on the promenade deck……..quite the opposite of the walkers and wheelchairs. The leader of the HAL Club and his team conduct activities during the day for each age group. We spotted seven of the kids going to the ice cream counter to get cones yesterday. Someone also told us that the deck fellows provided a blowup kiddie pool for the toddlers near the Dive In Grill. What a nice idea, since diapered babies are not allowed in the regular pools.
We spent some relaxing time sitting under the cloudy skies at the aft pool today. Intermittently, the rain came down in a mist, cooling us off. By 2pm, the rain became heavier, so we decided it was a good time for lunch. While we were eating in the Lido yesterday, a very friendly waiter came over to us and introduced himself. His name is Zulu, short for a long hard-to-pronounce Indonesian name. When we told him we had been on the Tales of the South Pacific last fall, he was surprised, saying he doesn't remember seeing us. His job is in the Lido during breakfast and lunch, then is a waiter in the Canaletto in the evenings. Since we eat in the dining room most days, our paths have never crossed. Guess he will see a lot of us now, because of the sandwich bar with full service.
There were two football games on TV today, and they were added to channel 39 in the Sports Bar and in our rooms. Nice that they can get that feed for us. Hopefully, the same will go for the Superbowl next month. We are not sure how that day will be planned, because it appears to be the day we will be in Melbourne, Australia. Guess we will just have to wait and see.
Today's subject for activities are the Grand Dollar Events, where participants receive DAM Dollars just for showing up to these events, or competing in them. For example, The Good Morning Amsterdam show at 9am on sea days draws a big enough crowd to fill the Wajang Theater. These folks get some Dollars to attend. The amount varies, depending on how many people attend.
Later in the day, a series of sports events take place around the ship. They can include basketball free throw, ping pong, bocce ball, silver bucket challenge, food fight culinary trivia, team trivia (wildly popular), shuffleboard, tic tac putt, and pub trivia. You can get some useful prizes by saving a lot of these Dollars. If nothing else, they are a good incentive to get folks out and about having fun.
A fun event is the "Whatever Floats Your Boat" Competition. The announcement went out today for all amateur or professional engineers, architects, and builders to sign up for sea trials later in the voyage. Everyday items are available to design and construct a vessel that is sea-worthy in one of the hot tubs. It's always a kick to see what some folks can conjure up
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We were invited to a VIP Party in the Queen's Lounge along with other high day mariners and people on deck seven. We had planned on going but got hung up on the Packers-Arizona NFL Playoff Game.
The La Fontaine Dining Room was dolled up this evening for a Tropical Paradise Dinner. Colorful palm trees and hanging parrot mobiles brightened up the room. Little bouncy palm trees were on each table, and certainly found their way to people's rooms after dinner. Knowing we liked them, our waiter, Wuhyu, took a couple of birds down, then gave them to the ladies at our table. We will hang the bird in our room by the window to give a splash of color to our growing garden. By the way, our room stewards are getting a kick out of watching the sunflower seeds grow by the day. Even one of the narcissus is pushing out a bloom already. Must be the constant light they get.
Speaking of light, the sun has been rising shortly after 3:30am, then setting at 4:30pm. Something is not right here, and we think we know what it is. For some unknown reason, we have done the time changes too soon to put us at the correct time for the Marquesas. We assume it was not the original plan, because the daily newsletter has the sunrise and sunset times off by an hour. The real times are on the ship info channel on TV. If you don't check it, you miss the sunset, which happened to be rather nice tonight. Thought we would never say this, but there was no time change tonight, and we were thankful.
A dance team called Dance Trance entertained the crowd this evening with dance styles from around the world. Mostly Latin numbers, it was like watching Dancing With the Stars in person.
Three more days to go before we step on land.
Bill & Mary Ann
