These sea days seem to be more about sales than anything else. Starting with promotions of future cruises, to tour options that are not yet filled, and photos that need to be sold are the activities of the day. The Shops onboard are selling inch of gold (almost gold), designer diamonds, and a fashion show displaying their most blingy bling (the real thing).
We suppose it is something to do on a dreary rainy day such as this one. The little bit of sun we saw early this morning, just about blinded us at breakfast. In time, the clouds moved in and blocked what sun was left. During his noon talk, Captain Frank mentioned that the temperature had dropped somewhat from yesterday, which was welcomed by all. It was only 81 degrees with a nice comfortable breeze. Showers passed over off and on all day. He expected much the same tomorrow, but with increased winds, 6 on the Beaufort scale, and sea swells of 5 ½ feet. At one point this afternoon we were passing one of the Seychelle Islands, but in the far distance. We have 684 nautical miles to go to reach Mauritius in two days from now. He is maintaining a speed of 17 knots using all three engines alternately. And the sea depth was 11,000 feet – over our heads for sure.
Then he surprised us with an announcement of a tropical cyclone south of Madagascar. He said the cyclone was producing 70 knot winds and the sea state with 30 foot waves. We may encounter that on our way towards Richards Bay. We sure hope not, but this seems to have been the case every time we are in this area of the Indian Ocean. Several times, it caused Madagascar to be cancelled. Actually, Madagascar was originally on this itinerary, but was dropped well before the trip started. Fingers are crossed that this will not affect our stop in Durban since a load of folks have booked overland safaris from that port. Us included.
Then he added some info regarding fishing nets they have seen on our way towards Mauritius. These commercial nets are outfitted with transponders that keep track of where they are. Somehow, the navigation staff were able to track the info on these transponders and traced them to Sri Lanka. We were afraid he was going to say we ran over some of these nets, which could cause significant damage to the azipods. Luckily, they have not run over any of them.
During the course of the day, we saw some birds flying alongside the ship. They were diving and fighting over the food, so we figured they appeared to be gannets. Checking on this, these may be the smaller Cape gannets. At one point, there were 30 of them with some adults and several juveniles. If you listen, you can hear them squawking with each other.
During lunch in the Lido, we spotted jumping dolphins in the distance. They were on the smaller size and barely cleared the surface. If we had not been looking, we would surely have missed them.
It took most of the day catching up with yesterday's hike and lunch. Actually it is fun re-tracing our steps with all of the photos. A big help were the maps the locals handed to us on the way into town. One side had the island of Mahe, and the other was a detailed map of Victoria, the capital. We worked online, which seemed to be operational today. No explanation why we lost it yesterday.
We had some really different items to choose from on the dinner menu. Starters were chicken empanadas with a mango chutney – a nice sweet and salty taste for a change. One of us had a Caesar salad and the other had the everyday shrimp cocktail. The entrée we chose was the lamb skewers with rice and veggies. It was good for a change. Too full from the ample dinner, we passed on the dessert. That disappoints our waiter to no end. So we said we donated our desserts to him. His choice would be the cheesecake and the whoopie pie.
There was a real show tonight with the singers and dancers performing Rock Britannia. We doubt the dancers were involved because the ship seemed to be rolling somewhat tonight.
Looking forward to one more sea day before exploring Mauritius on Sunday. Gosh, these days are going by way too fast.
Bill & Mary Ann
