SAILING SAILING OVER THE BOUNDING MAIN

February 5, 2012

A day without the dry land gout, the belly belly vinges and jerking at the naval is a good day!  Shipboard scuttlebutt – excuse me, scuttleboat – put the number of people struck down by the norovirus at between 80 and 400.  Mercifully, we did not number in that throng.  We did learn that while the ship was being sanitized yesterday, all of the food that was onboard was disposed of and all new food stocked in – even though the very likely cause of the illness was a virus.  And there were two other ships in port yesterday that were disembarking sick passengers, so the virus cause is strengthened.

Any way, a good day at sea – our favorite.  I did my “Pirates of the Caribbean” talk today to a good-sized audience, and it was received very well.  The “Curacao” talk is tomorrow, and if this week is like last week, it will be the largest attended of my talks.

I had an interesting discussion with Lisa Ball, the cruise director, this evening.  She said it is unusual for a 7 day cruise to have guest speakers, even though passengers frequently ask for them.  She asked me to encourage my audiences to respond favorably to the end of cruise survey so that they will be able to book more folk like me on future cruises.  And it is very gratifying to be told by the staff that they wish we could stay on longer.

We have booked an excursion for Curacao that explores that western part of the island, including a national park, and other photo op places, so in the Tuesday blog, I hope to have some pictures to share.

We weren’t going to take any more shore excursions, but the Princess Cruise Line, as a way to apologize for the delay in leaving Fort Lauderdale, which meant we missed our stop today at Princess Cays, gave every passenger a $50 credit to his or her shipboard account, and so we are using ours for this excursion.  They also gave everyone a $20 credit for having to buy lunch ashore yesterday waiting to get on the ship.  All together, the credits will cost Princess more than $200,000 – demonstrating that they are concerned about the well-being and the happiness of their guests.

Well, we set our clocks ahead one hour onboard tonight, so it is getting close to bed time.  Sleep tight, don’t let the bed bugs bite!

TTFN!