Our day at sea began with 46-degree temps, 84% humidity, and 17 mph winds. The ship is doing a speed of 19 knots, which should get us to Seattle Wednesday morning around 7am. During his noon talk, Captain Frank mentioned that over 200 guests will be leaving, which is a different number than we initially heard. Update Wednesday morning: There will be 200 leaving today, but no one boarding. So we will be sailing with 700 guests only until San Diego. We have 215 nautical miles to get to Seattle, where we hope to be docked closer to downtown.
Another time change one hour forward put us on Pacific time, which is home time for us. That will be the same as we travel down the coast to San Diego. Then there will be three hours to go ahead as we near Ft. Lauderdale. The sea state was pretty calm all day with swells around 5 feet in 5900 feet deep waters. The temperature will increase by the time we reach Washington State to 66 to 68 degrees where it will be partly cloudy and sunny. No rain was in the forecast. Then the Captain added that we have traveled 33,218 nautical miles so far this world cruise. That computes to traveling the length of the Equator one and a half times. And we did it mostly in the Pacific Ocean except for doing the east coast of South America and Antarctica.
We spent the majority of the day catching up with photos and reports as well as one of us taking a nice long walk on the promenade deck. Did we mention that last night during dinner around 8pm, one of the navigation officers announced there was a pod of orcas alongside the ship? Too bad it was too dark to see them, although some folks jumped up and looked out the portside windows of the dining room. Usually these sightings are not announced during meal times or show time, but last night was an exception.
Dinnertime found us ordering two Caesar salads ( double dressings on the side), one bowl of Avgolemomo soup (chicken, lemon, rice, egg, parsley & carrots) and grilled bang bang shrimp. OK, what’s the bang bang mean? Turned out to be tiny strips of jalapeno peppers, thus the bang. We both ordered the veal Weiner schnitzel which was quite good. Served piping hot made it even better. Come to think of it, we only snacked on the butter popcorn we bought in Ketchikan for lunch. We seem to enjoy dinner even more that way. Desserts were a rum flan with no rum taste whatsoever. And one of us enjoyed some slices of pineapple….also good.
This evening there was a seafood boil, a one-time dinner held in the Lido Marketplace. We think there was a $35 charge for the special meal and great for those who love a lot of seafood.
The entertainer this evening was vocalist Maria Campos with timeless classics and standards. A little of Puccini and a little of Sinatra.
Looking forward to hiking in Seattle and better yet, we understand we will be docking closer to town and not in the boonies.
Bill & Mary Ann
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