Another long, lazy sea day today, with another packed programme of events in which to participate, should we be so inclined. The weather was much improved today; the sun was out and it was not quite as windy as it was yesterday.
As usual, after breakfast, we went along to the Sky Lounge to take part in the Brain-Waker Trivia with Kendal, Janet, Frank and Norm. The little Colombian quiz-hostess Shirley had barely asked the final question before the “bing-bong” announcement came over the Tannoy: “Good morning Ladies and Gentlemen, this is the Voice from Above”, as Captain Leo always liked to start his daily updates. There followed the usual highly amusing weather and navigational information, in which Captain Leo told us how many nautical miles we were from the Leaning Tower of Pisa and from Sydney Opera House, as well as how many millions of “Mexican Tacoes” we were from different places. He then regaled us with some words of wisdom from his revered late grandfather before signing off. 😊
We could then continue with the answers to the quiz, and once again Trevor and I were part of the winning team! Yay! 😊
Afterwards we had a cup of coffee and returned to our stateroom, sitting out on the balcony for a while. One thing I can say about this cruise so far is just how calm the ocean has been, barely any perceptible motion; you’d hardly know you were on a ship.
At ten to eleven we found ourselves in the Eclipse Theatre for this morning’s presentation, entitled “Oceans Ahead – The Secrets of Ship’s Navigation”, by none other than Captain Leo himself. It was an extremely interesting talk in which he spoke about his career to date, the fact that he was the latest captain in a long line of captains in the family, and the sea-faring influences on him as a young boy in his native Greece. He explained in depth about all the things to consider when navigating a huge vessel through the world’s oceans and seas, the safety checks, the sea depths, weather, waves, the safety of the passengers and crew, and lots of other fascinating stuff.
At the end there was a Q and A session among the audience, and Captain Leo answered all the questions thoroughly and eloquently. We thoroughly enjoyed the talk before the Captain took his leave to return to his duties on the bridge. It wasn’t the last we’d seen of him today, however, not by a long chalk. 😊
The end of the Captain’s talk coincided nicely with the start of lunch, and first of all we went out to the Mast Bar where we enjoyed a pre-luncheon drink; an Aperol Spritz in my case and a bottle of Samuel Adams in Trevor’s. Then we went into the Oceans Café for our lunch before once again adjourning to the Eclipse Theatre for the matinée performance by comedy magician Chad Chesmark, whose show we’d enjoyed so much the other day.
The theatre was already pretty full when we arrived so we couldn’t get our usual front-row seats; we had to sit further back (although, when a magician is performing, that’s not always a bad thing). Chad’s performance today was a ‘mentalist’ show, based on supposed mind-reading and the power of suggestion, which is a great illusion if you’re very practised at doing it, which Chad clearly was. We enjoyed this show more than his main one the other day.
It did mean we had to leave the show early to get up to Deck 14 and the Sky Lounge to participate in the music quiz; when we got there, Kendal was there with a couple of new blokes we hadn’t met before, Tom and Tom. The theme today was Male Vocalists and the two Toms were brilliant at this, meaning we scored 13/15 and won yet again! That is now a total of 24 rubber bracelets Trevor and I had accumulated and we were told that we could trade them in on Saturday for some great prizes. 😊
After the music quiz we decided to go back to 8166 for a power-nap before the Progressive Trivia later on. I took back a cold glass of prosecco and did some of this blog then had a lie-down, watching the blue Pacific passing by our floor-to-ceiling glass doors. We then reconvened in the Sky Lounge with the rest of our team. We were somewhat dismayed to see that we were now leading by only one point over “The Internationals”, so we hoped that we would do well and they would do poorly. The final round would be tomorrow before the “awards ceremony” on Saturday – would “It’s Only A Game” lose at the final hurdle?
We spent the remainder of the afternoon pottering around the ship and taking advantage of the all-inclusive drinks package. 😊 Then we got showered and shampooed and ready for dinner, which was the usual grand affair in which we ate far too much and were very well looked after by our attentive Jamaican waiter David.
The entertainment in the Eclipse Theatre tonight was a singer called Laura Wright. She was a bit cheesy and a bit boring, and didn’t really stand out from any other cruise-ship singer. When she ended her show with the dreary Somewhere Over The Rainbow (one of my top 10 most-boring songs) it was all I could do to suppress a gigantic yawn, and it was just as well the house lights came on when they did, as it effectively prevented me from going to sleep.
We then went along to the Quasar lounge where they were holding the inevitable karaoke again. This time Kendal and Janet were there to give me some moral support, so I got up and sang You Know I’m No Good by Amy Winehouse, followed by Madonna’s Material Girl. The other ‘regular’ singers got up and we had a few drinks and enjoyed the banter with the friendly barman.
We finished the evening off by going back to the Eclipse Theatre to see Liars’ Club (called Call My Bluff in the UK) and this featured one of the entertainment team (I think his name was Chris) along with magician Chad Chesmark and none other than our own Captain Leo. The game works by displaying an obscure word on a screen and each of the three panellists must give the definition of the word – only one of them will be telling the truth and it’s up to the audience to guess which one.
The words usually have a risqué element to them (two of the words were HAWSEHOLE and INVAGINATION) so when each person was giving his definition it was absolutely hilarious, especially the captain. He had everyone absolutely rolling in the aisles and could have been a stand-up comedian if he wasn’t a seafaring captain. The hilarity was enhanced by his completely deadpan manner, and we laughed ourselves silly at this really enjoyable and entertaining show. 😊
We returned to 8166 around 11.30pm and settled down for the evening, trying to put to the back of our minds that we only had another two sea days to go and the end of our fabulous cruise was looming ever nearer.