Thursday – Sea Day Two (Too?)

Two sea days in a row. Good practice for our scheduled fall cruise when we wil have seven consecutive sea days between Dutch Harbor, Alaska and Sapporo, Japan. There was a mixture of sun and rain today. No big deal when you are at sea. And the weather is much warmer now as well. Today it was warm enough to sit outside and read when the sun was shining. The seas remain amazingly calm. You can hardly tell you are on a ship. No waves of note. No white caps.

On sea days you eat, you drink, you read, you nap. We did all those. We also watched a National Geographic film in one of the small cinemas about Ernest Shackleton’s ill-fated Endeavor journey to the South Pole. They never made it. The ship got trapped in ice and eventually destroyed. Amazingly enough, everyone on board was eventually rescued after Shackleton, ship Captan Frank Worsley, and Seaman Tom Crean took an agonizingly long journey in a lifeboat through the icy seas to get to South Georgia Island and its whaling station. Meanwhile the rest of his crew (22 men) remained stranded on perilous Elephant Island. A rescue mission sailed from South Georgia and everyone was saved after well over a year trapped in the ice. Tom Crean, you may remember, was a resident of Anascual on the Dingle Peninsula. We have oft visited the South Pole Inn that he established and ran in Anascual, and we have visited his grave located nearby the inn.

The ship has other activities and entertainment as well. There is some kind of show every night, but we usually skip them. There are trivia and “name that tune” competitions. We’ve participated a few times. There is an afternoon tea every day in the Winter Garden. Tonight there is a special “fish and chips” get together in the pool area. There is a lecture or two every day on some aspect of history related to the area.

Here are some random pictures around the ship that I took today. Note our “drinks package” magnet on the wall of our stateroom. It’s magnetized, and ship walls are steel, so magnets work. The sign is supposed to go on the outside of our stateroom door, but Viking’s steel room doors are coated with some not magnetic material, so it won’t stick there very well. (Best laid plans of . . . . .) See Elaine reading?

Back tomorrow from Lerwick in the Shetland Islands. Who has watched the cable series called “Shetland”? Great show.