Tuesday May 13 - Thur May 15th ... At sea

Tuesday May 13 - Thur May 15th ... At sea

King Neptune and his court

Passengers participating

These three days at sea were as relaxing and fun as sea days can be. We read, relaxed, swam, ate to excess and generally became totally 'chilled out' .... Wonderful. Janice managed to have a wonderful massage in the spa... Love bamboo massages. One other event was the 'crossing the equator ceremony'. Apparently, a sailor who has never crossed the equator is a Polliwog, who becomes a more trusted and respected Shellback, after crossing and becoming 'initiated' which in this case involved much jello, cold spaghetti, whipped cream, chocolate sauce and any other messy stuff that could be flung at the inductees! Derek and Janice were both glad that they did not volunteer to represent the other passengers during this ceremony... Many ruined t-shirts that day!!

Off to the Buffet

Buffet lunch at sea

Beautiful day at the Panorama buffet

Happy and relaxed

Other moments of note included a small fire ... the whole ship went quiet when the alarm went off and the captain came on and said 'attention.. this is not a drill'... talk about getting the sudden and  devoted attention of over 600 people. It was a 'first stage' response alarm... so basically only the crew had to panic... LOL... we all just sat quietly, each with our own thoughts of who's ides was it to go on this cruise. All was well and disaster averted... we were sideswiped again the next day with an note in our room saying that because of recent reports of pirate activity off the coast of Guinea (waters which were were to enter the next day) we were asked to participate in 'pirate drill'. Needless to say Janice has switched from watching for whales and dolphins to vigilantly scanning the horizon for pirates, imagination running wild!! Derek of course just yanks off his shirt and falls asleep in the shade, totally unconcerned of the dangers... LOL.  Pirate drill by the way involves going to your room, staying away from windows and waiting for instructions!! Not in the least bit exciting. I thought it would be cool to have the crew dressed in outlandish clothes, screaming and prancing around with plastic AK47s and parrots, kidnapping passengers while limping on wooden legs... but no such luck... just a boring walk to the cabin!!!  No imagination these people!!!