Wednesday, Day 102 - Apr 18 - Cruising the Atlantic Ocean

Well today is day six at sea with four more to go.. This is the longest we have been at sea up to now. The ship is still really moving and actually the sea looks worse today than it has, plus the skies are a steel gray. We will see what the Captain says at noon.

Just a routine day, breakfast, lecture by Terry, “Argentina - A Land of Promises and Broken Dreams” for Dick and cards for Carolyn where we start a two day project with a neat bird design.

At noon the Captains tells us we are at 30 degrees S, 26 degrees W and have 14,000 feet of ocean below us. The sea state is large waves of 14 feet and winds of 19 knots.. We are 1,529 miles from our next port. The motion will continue as is for today, but should improve tomorrow. We are all ready for that, walking is a real pain!

Dick skips lunch, but Carolyn goes to the Compass Rose as they have their tasty, small fisherman’s platter today. It is two shrimp, two scallops and two small pieces of two different fish. Just the right size for lunch.

We meet up again for the South American wine tasting at 2:15PM. They are offering four different wines, two from Argentina and two from Chile, all red. The ones from Argentina are both Malbecs: Achavel Ferrer Malbec, a preferred wine at $60 a bottle and Septima Malbec an included wine.  The Achavel is not to our taste, but Nixon, the Head Sommelier says it needs to be decanted and allowed to breath an hour or so to be at its best. Everyone seems to like the Septima and the ship has 200 bottles. It will go fast! We like both the Chile wines, Kancils Cabernet Sauvignon and Arboleda Carmenere. Nixon tells us the wines they offer in the dining rooms are in the $12 to $15 range retail in the US and the preferred wines start at $40 and up retail. It is an interesting 45 minutes. 

The dining room is very hot. This has been a problem through out the ship since Walvis Bay, including our room. Both cards groups have complained, even the ones that have commented when it was a little cool. This is the fourth day the dining room has been too warm. Carolyn wrote a note on the comment card about the increased temperature in the food and drink venues and about the fact that for the third time our room is again too warm. She held off on turning it in to give Daniella a few days to get the issue fixed.  Nothing has changed and we are heading into warmer weather so Carolyn turned in the comment card, with six handwritten pages attached, this afternoon after the wine tasting. We will see if anything improves.

They are doing crepes at Tea Time this afternoon. Carolyn loves Crepes Suzette so she takes her book and goes up stairs. The crepes are wonderful and there is some nice low keyed piano music so she winds up staying until about 5:30PM. Dick entertains himself in the room.

On the way back to the room, Daniella stops Carolyn and tells her she has read the “good” letter. So we know it is moving through the staff’s hands.

We go up to the Galileo Lounge for cocktails and to watch the pretty sunset and listen to the ship’s orchestra for awhile. About 7:30 we are a bit hungry and decide to go to Sette Mari for dinner. They are doing an Italian Steak House night. We are not very hungry, but our favorite waitress says she will fix us a plate of the best bites. She is Italian and does a great job. We get some vegetable lasagna, a piece of three-cheese, thin crust pizza and some meatballs as a starter and finish the meal with a tuna steak for Dick and a Caesar salad for Carolyn.

Back in the room the phone light is blinking...it is a message from Nikkei, the Hotel Manager. She wants to meet with us and the Chief Engineer tomorrow about our problem. There is really no need to do this since we held the same meeting early on and they got it fixed. We will see about this tomorrow. Just undo the recent change.

Now it is bedtime. Hopefully the seas will calm down tomorrow. We like a little motion, but this is ridiculous.