At Sea

Saturday, August 18, 2016

A lazy day at sea, we needed this!

Apparently the ship stopped in the middle of the ocean for two and a half hours last night, someone had to be medically evacuated by helicopter.  We slept through it all.

Captain Dimitrios gave an interesting talk this morning (running on 3 hours of sleep and lots of caffeine) on the ship's navigational systems.  There are 8 different ways to steer the ship if the main wheel breaks down.  If all else fails, the portholes on deck 2 are retractable and there are oars under each bed, ha ha.  He is quite a jokester.

There was a Q&A session. Some interesting facts:
- This ship won the Environmental Ship of the Year award.
- Every year the captain needs to get a certification stating that he is "sane".
- There are 2 jail cells on the ship, and every cabin can become a jail cell.  When there are unruly passengers, they are locked in their cabins and dropped off in port the next day.
- The ship gets about one foot per gallon of gas.  So much for being environmental.
-  Modern day cruise ships make the Titanic look like a tug boat.  Here they are side by side:

Other facts we have dug up that were not mentioned:
- Cruise ships have morgues with refrigeration units.  Every year 200 people die on cruise ships.
- When you see "Friends of Bill W" on the daily program, it refers to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.
- Some people actual retire and live full-time on cruise ships, finding it cheaper than retirement homes.

There was a lunch organized today for all of us who had signed up for the Cruise Critic Roll Call.  We took up one whole side of the dining room. We sat with our Scottish friends Morven and Uwe (rhymes with groovy).

Duck l'orange for dinner.  I think they gave Frankie the whole duck:

We actually went to the show tonight.  We have gone to surprisingly few of the shows this time.