Tuesday, 22 April 2014

Thursday, April 17 - at Sea....


Leaving Belize yesterday - two Norvweigan cruise ships in port as well...

Began slowly this morning!  David chose to attend the ‘Navigation@Sea lecture – with 3rd Officer – ‘Anna’.  She is from the UK, works for Princess and is studying to complete her ‘1st Mate’ ticket.  Her job hours are midnight-4am and then midday-4pm.  She is in charge of the steering of the ship during those hours, if there is an emergency, traffic or weather issues, she has to call the 1st Officer and the Captain for assistance.  She gave an informative lecture on the history of navigation and a ‘behind the scene’ look at sailing the Caribbean Princess.  There was also a Navigational Chart Auction – the chart from this voyage signed by all the officers – David said it went for $US200. 

At the end of the lecture, she opened the floor for questions.  Someone asked, ‘Who was steering the ship on Monday night?’  (I may not have mentioned in Tuesday’s blog post that we were both woken at around 1am by the severe rolling of the ship!  At one point, I felt slightly lifted off the bed, and David felt that he could have been rolled out of bed!  The last time I looked at the clock was 4am before I went back to sleep.)  So Anna replied (sheepishly) that she was!  She went on to explain that we had a gale of 50 knots for that period of time!  Putting the stabilizers out wouldn’t have been effective due to the direction of the waves and would have slowed the ship down and made use late for the next port.  She didn’t say what the swell was.  I’m just glad we were in our beds and not trying to move about the ship!

Filled in the rest of our day with a little shopping, internet, reading, washing…. It was Formal Night and we didn’t attend.  They did the Balloon Drop in the main Piazza.
We have met some lovely Peruvian ladies who work in the Horizon Court buffet and have been trying to speak Spanish with them when we can, so we ate dinner there and had some fun. 

Made entirely out of dough....


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