Day 07 - Friday, 11/15/24 - Day 6 At Sea

 As we begin our 6th day at sea and 7th of the voyage, the seas were calm and remained calm throughout the day.  The ship was also sped along on its path by a strong following ocean currents which boosted our actual speed to 19 knots.  Even though we are still scheduled to miss our first port of call at Horta, Azores, we will arrive at our scheduled 2nd stop at Ponto Delgada at noon tomorrow which is only an hour later than the 11am scheduled arrival in Horta.  Every time we do one of these long cruises with lots of sea days I am truly amazed at how much distance we can travel in a day at less than the normal speed limit in the City of Seattle of 25 miles per hour.  At our cruising speed of 19 miles per hour it's roughly the equivalent of driving from Seattle, Washington to Missoula, Montana.

Our activities today were similar to the preceding days.  Early rise, morning devotional, coffee chat with Nick, and then lectures throughout the day with a break for lunch.  Fernando, media manager, was the guest in the coffee chat today and he was an enthusiastic and spirited guest.  He's responsible for all of the communications that are presented to us as guests.  This includes all of the paper programs, the Navigator app, & video screens scattered throughout the ship.  In dry dock the only major thing added were some of the larger video screens.  But he did comment on how sensitive the display screens are and that some had to be recalibrated to properly display their content.  


Michael Sullivan presented another excellent talk on how to enjoy art for longer than 5.6 seconds which is the average that people spend in front of a painting.  His big tip was to find a few items of interest, and then spend more time viewing them rather than simply trying to see it all at 5.6 seconds a painting.  He also gave a brief summary of his background and qualifications for doing what he does.  Nick gave a nice port talk on Napoli.  After lunch, we caught up on the Late Show from the past few days and then attended a lecture on Lord Nelson (interesting but a bit boring presentation) and Kate Ross gave an excellent lecture on Islamic art with lots of photographs of mosques and art objects.  I still don't care for her style of sitting behind a a computer screen and reading her presentation.  Her material is excellent and would present much better delivered as a lecture more in the style of Mr. Sullivan. 


Before our excellent dinner in the Canaletto, we sat by a window to read and just watch the sea go by.








The evening's entertainment on the Main Stage was a movie, Fly Me to the Moon. It was okay, but probably fuel for conspiracy theorists.



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