Day 40 - Wednesday, 12/18/24 - At Sea to Florida - Day 6
We were up and going by 7 AM this morning to get ready for the daily interdenominational devotional time with Pastor Dan. Afterwards, Nick interviewed Metka, who is the executive housekeeper from Slovenia. She was the executive housekeeper on the Grand South America trip we were on last year on the sister ship the Zaandam. Her previous positions were in the Yugoslavian army, and she comes across as a military figure as she directs her "boys". In the Q&A session one passenger commented that her cabin steward gave high praise to her as a leader for the housekeeping group.
Just before the following event, I received a alert from my alarm system on my pick up truck that it had received a blow. So I activated my security camera and determined that a 12" tree had blown over at a little after 5 AM local time in Seattle. It didn't appear that there was any damage, but I had my our son check it out later in the day and he confirmed that there was no damage and that if he had a tree fall in his yard, that was how he would want the tree to fall. So it looks like I'll have a little bit of cleanup to do once I get home. It was surprising that this particular tree blew down as I had no prior indication that it was weak. It broke off about 10 feet in the air, which was again very surprising, but I learned later that there had been some pretty high winds come through the area. My plans had been to take that particular tree down, but the wind did it for me; now all I will have to do is cut it up into firewood. I do find it amazing that we can be halfway around the world and I can be looking at pictures of my backyard and scan it with a camera that is able to be directed remotely.
Today was the day two of the Mariner award ceremonies and was devoted to the upper tier of awardees. It was a full main level of the Main Stage area. Awards were given out for those with 300 sailing days, which is a silver medallion, 500 days for a gold medallion and 700 days for a platinum medallion. As a point of reference, we are well beyond the 700 day level. We received our platinum award in a very small ceremony on a previous ship. The awardees received their medallions and also a photo with the captain and the hotel general manager. Members of the President's club which represents people who have sailed more than 1400 days and invited to join. They were also allowed to come up and have their pictures taken with Captain and hotel general manager. After the awards presentation, we all adjourned to the main dining room for a special Mariner's lunch, which was quite good. We were joined at our table by a widow lady from Canada and we enjoyed a very pleasant conversation with her. She was initially apprehensive about sitting with us because she was a single person and we reassured her that she was most welcome to sit at our table. We had saved a place for Pam, but Pam elected to sit at another table.
After lunch, we returned to the main stage where Richard Watson gave a presentation on Portuguese explorers in the Age of Discovery. Parts of it were quite interesting, especially the sections where he described how the Portuguese discovered the various wind patterns of the south Atlantic and how they use those to their advantage in reaching the Cape of Good Hope at the south tip of Africa. Bradley Jacobson gave his AI presentation on videos, which was really interesting once again.
Mid afternoon there was an announcement requesting volunteer blood donors of Type O blood for a medical situation. No further announcements or confirmation was provided.
Following a short break, Chris Bannister sang a matinee concert on the Main Stage that was again most excellent. I personally really enjoy listening to his voice and his backstory about the songs and what was going on at the time. I had to leave the concert before the last song as I had an appointment with the future cruise consultant to book a Alaska cruise for 2026. This cruise is one that we wanted to take in 2024, but it conflicted with some other cruising that we wanted to do. This particular cruise will visit mainly smaller ports in Alaska and British Columbia with exception of Juneau and Ketchikan, which are pretty good size ports. If you're interested in joining us on this cruise, feel free to contact me and I will share more details about it. I was able to book the room that is right next to the room we are currently occupying on the Volendam. This future cruise is on the Zaandam, which is the sister ship to the Volendam.
We then took our positions in the Crow's Nest and watched the sunset as we continued our journey westward towards Fort Lauderdale. Once again, we had dinner in the Lido and dinner was followed by participating in the Volendam carnival night. This event was held in the Lido pool area and consisted of a number of games in which one could earn raffle tickets. Prizes were drawn using the raffle tickets and I won a 2200 mA power bank used for providing emergency power for a cell phone. It was a fun activity and similar to one that we did on the Zaandam last year on the Grand South America cruise.
It's sort of hard to believe that we only have two more cruising days until the end of our voyage. Once again, we have really enjoyed our time meeting new friends reacquainting with old friends and enjoying new destinations especially touching our last continent: Africa. Today, we gave our room stewards, Hasan & Wayu a day off and I made our bed which turned out pretty decent.
Tonight we gain another hour as we set our clocks back. We'll have one more setback tomorrow night and we will be on eastern standard time for our arrival into Fort Lauderdale on Saturday morning. I do like having the clocks go backwards and I have found that I get much better rest than when the clocks are advanced when we go eastbound.
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