World Cruise 2016 Day 31

​Day 31 – At sea. A nice sleep-in morning. The air is a cool 64 degrees, skies are partly cloudy and the ship has its usual slow pitch and roll. During the night the Captain has made a decision to alter his course to Australia. Instead of going straight to Melbourne, he heads several hundred miles south before heading west. His hope is to "sneak" between two storm systems that lay in front of us. We will find out tonight if this was a good plan. He has warned us twice to secure everything in our cabins and to place anything fragile on the floor.

Laundry time is approaching, sometime before Australia. Considering I don't have the skills to fold and hang laundry one handed which would be required if I need one hand to keep standing upright, I decide to do laundry this morning. I check out the laundry on deck six and find only one dryer in use. I gather everything and start the laundry, returning 28 minutes later to load everything into a dryer. Three dryers are in use, but there is one that is available. Just being a little nosy I look into the other dryers as there were no other washers that could have finished before mine.

Each of the dryers has one article of clothing in it! You rationalize it, I can't, but I do have a possible explanation. These machines are on the high rent deck, maybe the guest has never used a dryer before and just doesn't know.

By noon time, the temperature has risen to 66, but the skies remain sunny. Not too many sitting outside today. I fill out some more paperwork for Australia, and head to several presentations this afternoon. Another by Alan Wright and a second by Future cruise Consultant Joanne and Location guide Barbara on ports of call on a cruise HAL calls "Voyage of the Vikings", a round trip cruise from Boston to Iceland, Greenland and Northern Europe.

I decide to give the dining room another try. The hostess recognizes me and greets me by name even though I haven't been to the dining room in several days. I am seated at a window table at the stern of the ship. Five other guests quickly join me. Jeff, that I had dined with very early in the cruise, and 4 others, including one that just boarded the ship in Auckland.

Service is terribly slow. I ask the waiter how many tables he has, and he replies 7. I can see he has three six tops, a ten, a four and an eight. I don't know what the seventh is. Even if it is a deuce, he has about 40 guests. Impossible for any waiter. I explain the issue to the hostess as I leave, she promises it will be taken care of. As I turn away she turns to another employee and overhear her say, "yes, another complaint about the slow service". I think I might go to the dining room again tomorrow just to see what their solution is. It has become very obvious they have cut the service staff too much, an observation made by many passengers.

As the day progressed, the skies cloud over, the winds increase to 30 mph and switch to the south, and the swells increase in height. The sea sickness bags are stationed around the ship, and every body now staggers a little like I always do. The roll is about 6 or 8 degrees, and the pitch about 2 degrees.

Most disconcerting to most passengers is the elevators, as the ship pitches and rolls the cables slap back and forth and the elevator cars rattle whether stationary or moving. Does the elevator in the "Tower of Terror" rattle around? If it doesn't it could be an added dimension of fright for many riders, it is effective here.

Tonight's entertainer is a violist. She is good, but not my favorite entertainer. Like many of the entertainers, she works a lot of cruise ships, and has been away from home for eight months. Before boarding in Picton, she was on an Azamara ship.

Tonight we set our clocks back another hour. It is 9:21 PM on here on the ship, and 4:22 AM in Florida.