Friday - April 01, 2005

Life at Sea: Hi-jinks on the High Seas

We get a number of announcements over the PA system every day about this and that, but when the Captain speaks over the speakers in the cabins, you know it is something either very serious or very interesting. Today, the Captain made an announcement around 9 am that fell into the "interesting" category.

I had just rolled out of bed when the voice of Captain Bates came over the PA. He said he wanted to tell us about something that he became aware of during the night. As we all know, water is even more precious than oil in Saudi Arabia. Captain Bates went on to say that an American university had been doing research on ways to alleviate the problem, and if we were to go up on deck around 9:30 am, we would be passing a cargo ship that is hauling an iceberg from South America to Saudi Arabia, where they will be melting the iceberg and collecting the water in a reservoir. He advised everyone to take their cameras because they would be able to get great shots of the iceberg. I don't know how many people actually went up on deck, but more than a few were taken in by Captain Bates's April Fool's Joke. The lady who sits next to us in the dining room said she was halfway out her cabin door when her husband called her back! I can just see the newspaper headline - QE2 Hits Iceberg and Sinks in the Red Sea!

One thing that Mike always does in the morning is to turn on the TV to the channel that shows the view out over the water from the bridge. Today, we could see these huge waves rolling towards the ship and breaking over the windows high up on the bridge. But when we turned our heads to the side and looked out our cabin windows, we were looking at perfectly calm seas. The crew were televising the scene taken from from the Bridge during an Atlantic Crossing from about 1997 when the QE2 had to battle through 90+ foot waves!

We did notice, though, that we are going just over 29 knots, which is very fast for a ship this size and almost full speed. This was all explained in Captain's noon announcement when he told us (all April Fool's joking aside) that we have a very sick passenger on board and we are making for a port in Egypt where we will be able to take the passenger ashore to a hospital around 7 this evening. Then we will alter course again to cross the Red Sea and on to Jordan, where we will still arrive on schedule in Aqaba. The hospital staff are certainly being kept busy on this trip. (In addition to the other events I have written about, we have also had one passenger collapse and die on a shore excursion of a heart attack, the Protestant Minister who left the ship in Hong Kong after suffering a heart attack, and another passenger who lost 25 pounds during the first two months of the trip and left the ship after being diagnosed as having pancreatic cancer.) Combined with the ports we have missed because of adverse weather, the crew say they have never seen a World cruise like it.

But keeping in the spirit of the fun of the day, the afternoon was devoted to the World Cruise Charity Country Fair where we had games, raffles, a book sale, a fortune teller, navigation charts for sale, silent auctions, etc. It was a lot of fun, and Mike and I bought a chance to sound the noon whistle one day and won a visit to the bridge, complete with champagne, in a silent auction. I was hoping to win a visit to the ships stores (wine cellars, food pantry, and the like) but missed out on that opportunity. We also came away with a number of nautical charts from different parts of the world and two engraved QE2 highball glasses. I'd say that we certainly did our bit for charity.