Tuesday, 7 March 2017

March 3, 2017



This is Sea Day #4. Clocks went an hour forward overnight, the time is back to the same time zone as Sydney.  There will be more advancing of the clocks by two hours to adjust to New Zealand time zone after Melbourne.
    The sky today has wispy white clouds letting the sun shine through onto the rolling ocean.  The white caps are riding on top of the 3 meter high wave peaks agitated by the 30 km per hour winds.  The temperature is about 18 C.
   A windbreaker was needed for walking circuits on Deck 5. On his noon announcement, the captain mentioned that the winds across the bow were at 80 km per hour, accounting for natural wind and the speed of the ship.   When climbing the 19 steps at the bow of the ship, from Deck 5 to the Deck 6 helipad, in order to walk a circuit around the ship’s promenade deck, at the top of the staircase you were almost blown backwards and struggled to place one foot in front of the other for the 30 steps around the bow walkway.  It took great effort to step forward. For the morning, having logged 6,400 steps we took a break for coffee on Deck 11 at the Windjammer.
   We skipped lunch, having had a late breakfast and attended Dr. Peter Dingle’s afternoon talk, “How to Overcome Toxic Overload”.  The sea day lectures are not destination oriented this cruise, as they were during the Top of Australia cruise.
   We joined Bob and Maureen in the Windjammer for a snack before we all went to the ballroom dance lesson that was part 2 of Rock & Roll.  The instruction was quite good and there were 3 new couples who joined the group.  We just watched as the steps were ones that we dance frequently.  Even though Claire was reading for most of the lesson, two different couples stopped to speak to us to tell us that they looked forward to watching us dance in the evenings.
   We returned to the stateroom after a stop at Latte-tudes for café mochas.  In the staircase mezzanines are lovely blown glass creations about 8 meters longs and over a meter high hanging on the walls.  We photographed some of them as well as a picture of Deck 5 with the lifeboats hanging above it.
    Before dinner, there was a Crown & Anchor Society reception for passengers who have cruised at least 30 days with Royal Caribbean.  We followed Bob and Maureen into the Colony Club.  We were able to dance a rumba while people were filing into the venue.  Complimentary drinks were served and there was a nine meter table of hors d’oeurves and another nine meter table of desserts for people to help themselves.  There was a short speech from the Crown & Anchor Society loyalty ambassador. There are over 900 guests having sailed more than 30 days with Royal Caribbean.  One guest received a plaque for having accumulated her 700th sailing day with Royal Caribbean on this cruise.  We only have over 150 ocean sailing days spread over four cruise companies.
    At dinner we changed to a table of four with Bob and Maureen since the oval table of 10 with only 8 people was not working for us, even though we liked the other four people it was hard for the people four down the table to hear any of the conversation.  Today’s choices were Crabs Cakes, Mushroom soup and Summer Fruit Medley.  The main course was chicken cordon bleu with rice pilaf, carrots and broccoli or Braised beef Dijon with mashed potatoes and carrots.  Dessert was Crème Brulée.  The entertainment this evening was vocalist, Monique Montez, whose lovely voice sang familiar songs.

Steps 12,097




No comments:

Post a Comment