Day 35 - Friday, 12/13/24 - At Sea to Florida - Day 1

Overnight the seas were calm and we enjoyed a nice rest. It was also good to gain an hour last night. As will be our custom for the next eight days we start the days with our morning interdenominational devotional and it's followed by the coffee chat with Nick. Today's guest was Kevin, the documentation manager. Kevin described the challenges of keeping all the documentation in order for all of the various port stops and he described how he is the first one off the ship and the last one on the ship and is the principal contact with the port agent.


Ida Kolte lectured on the battle of Trafalgar on the main stage. She's a great presenter and her method of explaining the battle and how it was significant and accomplished by Lord Nelson was very interesting and easy to follow. Nick then came back on stage and did one of the canned presentations And this one was on Italian fashion, which was really engaging. We broke for lunch and enjoyed a great conversation with a couple from Pennsylvania until about 1:30.


Battle map for the Trafalgar engagement

Our afternoon lecture was Bradley Jacobson, who spoke on the topic of artificial intelligence. This was an introductory session and the first of eight talks on this subject. He's a doctoral candidate studying artificial intelligence, so I'm looking forward to learning a bit more about AI and it's possible applications 


We returned to the Crow's Nest after Bradley's talk and spent the afternoon there watching the ocean and enjoying our Coke Zeroes and peanuts until around 5:30 when we broke for our Lido dinner. The evening entertainment was Chris Bannister, a John Denver tribute singer. I went to the 7:30pm show solo as Angela had a zoom session she wanted to watch and participate in. She later joined me at the 9 o'clock performance. Chris was a fabulous singer, probably the best of the entire voyage so far. His voice was crystal clear and sounded just like John Denver

          Chris Bannister

Afterwards, we caught up on watching our three favorite late night comedians on YouTube before retiring. We also set our clocks back one more hour and we gained an hour of sleep. I really like these nights.


 

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