Day 8 – At Sea - The weather continues to be near perfect. We are headed on a north westerly course and the wind is behind us making the apparent wind on deck very light. Many passengers decide it is a perfect day to lay out in the sun, but I am not one of them. I stay out of the sun most of the time except back home when I go to the pool early in the morning before the sun is very high in the sky.
I decide today to splurge for breakfast and have an egg omelet. During buffet breakfast hours eggs are cooked to order and brought to your table in the Windjammer. Eggs are good and I even have a couple of slices of bacon.
I take several walks around various decks just for the exercise. Something I never paid much attention to before, in addition to the regular lifeboats which are large enough to hold all passengers and crew, deck 5 aft the ship also carries inflatable rafts capable of holding an additional 1600 people. There are also more life rafts forward, but I didn't count them. Maybe some other day.
On previous cruises I have seen the crew training in the use of the rafts. As part of the exercise they put the raft in the pool, flip it upside down and the crew members take turns righting the raft and helping other members climb in from the water. I don't expect to ever need to use them, but it is nice to have a little idea how they work just in case.
During the early afternoon I make several posts to my blog including sending some pictures of Curacao. The process was very slow and time consuming. For the next few days I have free internet time, but that isn't always the case. I will learn when I return home if the process completed correctly.
Dan, the dining room manager calls me to ask how the dining room went last night. I relate that it was better, but he acknowledged that the seating process was not up to his expectations. After 20 or 25 minutes on the phone I was almost beginning to feel that he was looking for me to help solve his seating problems.
I don't know why, but 30 minutes later a small plate of cheese and fruit arrives at my room. Usually there is an attached note that indicates the who, what, and why. There is no note, and the room service delivery person has no idea. I suspect it was sent by Dan.
The usual crowd gathers in the Diamond lounge at 4 PM. It is our second formal night, and fewer people are dressed up than during the first formal night. A very typical pattern.
I am seated on the opposite side of the room with new people and a new waiter, Warren. Amazing. It finally happens, we all order and eat together! I'm almost in shock.
After dinner I go to the room to ditch the jacket and tie, and head to the main theater to catch the evenings show. My decision to go early was a good one as nearly all seats were taken 25 minutes before show time. "Horizon" is a 3 member male group that does a Motown show. Not exactly my preferred type of music, but they put on an excellent show that was appreciated by the audience.
I realize that I need to figure out a better method of naming posts. I am always writing after the fact, so to use the actual date becomes problematic. Often a single post covers more than one sea day, so sea day may not work well. Unfortunately I have no control over the date that is used in the blog index, the entry in the index is the date that the server receives the post. I will work on this, and hopefully devise a protocol that is less confusing.
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