Saturday, Day 15 - Jan 20 - Cruising the Pacific Ocean

The captain was right! Sometime after midnight we were able to unbuckle our bed belts! But it does make for good sleeping, we were almost late for breakfast! Plus, we had to turn our clocks forward 30 minutes to match up with the time in our next port.

There is a lecture on the Spanish American War this morning, but Dick misses it again playing his computer game. We have a muster drill at 10AM, but since we are still moving around some, the Captain decides just to have Jamie read the important directions over the ship’s PA system. Fine by us. 

At noon we are located at 146: 37.58 N and 3: 50.42 W, almost to the Equator. We are 880 miles to our next port of call. We have moderate seas with winds at 25 knots and waves at 11.5 feet. It is a balmy 79 degrees and mostly sunny.

There are two big, planned events today and one, hopefully, unplanned and not to be repeated:

The Galley Lunch is from 11:30AM to 1:30PM. It is always fun to see behind the scenes in the kitchen. We get our food buffet style in the kitchen from lavish displays of meats, sea foods, veggies, pastas and cheese set up by the staff. Along with all kinds of dessert, they are serving cherries jubilee.

Unplanned is defined as a total power outage in the ship a little after 4PM first noted by the fan in our room stopping. Then the CD comes on to announce that we have had a power outage and they will get back to us just as soon as they know something further!  This bit of good news is compounded by the fact that the ship slows and comes to a complete stop and becomes a sailboat!

After about 15 minutes we are told power is being restored to the ship and two of the generators are back on line but our fan is still off and the ship is still drifting! Jack, our traveling companion bear wants to know if we will have to sleep on deck like we did on a cruise back in 1996. Just as we are contemplating that possibility, the room power comes up and CD, Jamie, comes on the PA and assures us all systems are restored and we will be underway in a jiffy. In this case, a jiffy is another ten minutes or less. The ship turns from its 270 degree heading caused by our drift to ESE and we are again on our way. The joys of cruising!

The other planned event is that we cross the Equator into the Southern Hemisphere later to night. So at 5:30PM we go up to the pool deck for the cocktail party and crossing ceremony. King Neptune and his court are there to greet all the Shellbacks (those who have crossed the equator before and the Pollywogs (those who haven’t). We enjoy cocktails and music while the Polywogs are initiated including some of the passengers.

We have a nice sunset, no green line, but a big pod of dolphins are out playing beside the ship. Then it is off to dinner at Sette Mari where we make a dinner of some of our favorite small bites, salad and dessert.

The show tonight features Michael Falzon, an international music theater star, but we pass in favor of our books and bed. Currently we are still over a degree north of the Equator. The sea state is down to large waves, 11.5 feet and the wind speed is 32.5 knots so we are still moving around, but nothing like last night....no bed belts needed.