Chalk it up: my first sleep on board. It’s all very quiet, with very little movement.
Well, it’s time to start getting a bit fit! Enough of this procrastination! I changed into gym gear and went for a walk around the promenade deck. There were heaps of people already out there pounding the boards. It’s still warm and somewhat humid, but much easier to tolerate as there’s a brisk breeze as the ship moves along.
At breakfast I shared a table with a pleasant couple who are members of the on-board choir, and invited me along. There are about 100 in the choir, and they practise every lunchtime. But that might conflict with lunches or get-togethers with the 10CC group (Cruise Critic members o the 2010 World Cruise), so we’ll see.
The highlight of the morning was Pirate Drill. I’m serious! The threat of pirates around the coast of Oman, Yemen, and into the Red Sea is a very real situation, and all ships have to have a well-organised strategy to deal with it if something nasty happens. We had to go to our rooms at 9.30am, then wait there, away from windows or external walls, with one person sitting/standing in the open doorway, ready to hear instructions from staff in the corridors. It ended up as a good chance to meet and chat with the people in adjacent/opposite cabins as we were waiting there, with pirate jokes being passed around from one cabin to another. Meanwhile the ship’s staff were testing all their procedures, whatever they are. The whole operation took half an hour, then we heard a ‘thank you, that all went well’, and off we went to do our thing.
I went off to the Patisserie to meet Philip and Jenny, the New Zealand couple I’d been in contact with quite often on the Cruise Critic website over the past several weeks. They’re very friendly chatty people and I enjoyed getting to know them. Philip is an optometrist in Wellington NZ, and Jenny works at a senior admin level at the University of Wellington.
We decided we’d meet up at 12.30 in Jammers nightclub to meet the rest of the 10CC group. There was a large group of about 25 or so people, and we newies were introduced to everyone, then we went off to the dining room together for lunch, spread over several tables. I had a great chat with Karen, from East Melbourne, who is doing the whole world trip.
Early in the afternoon I had a bit of a splosh around in the pool then lay in the sun for a bit. There’s a very slight movement of the ship so that the pool sloshes just a bit over the lip of the pool into an enclosed flat paved area around the pool. There are plenty of deck-chairs vacant, so there’s no trouble about finding one to use – either in the sun or in the shade.
At about 5 I wandered up to the ice cream sundae bar near the pool, to meet up with a few CC people again. Karen, Ray and Gail were there and we sat and chatted for a while. The ice cream sundae girl also does some cocktails, so I ended up trying a Coke with amaretto, which was really pretty yummy!
While we were sipping and chatting, we realised that the ship had stopped in mid-ocean! And then there was an announcement that there had been an electrical problem that the engineers were trying to fix, but couldn’t. Every hour or so there would be another announcement, with news that they were in contact with engineers at company headquarters in the US. Meanwhile there were lots of half-serious jokes going around about how we were sitting ducks for pirates! Eventually some time about 7.30, they got the problem fixed, and the ship set off again.
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