At Sea

Day 1 of five days at sea.

Having bid Japan goodbye yesterday, our next “land Ahoy” is scheduled to be the Aleutian Islands of Alaska … on 30 June.

But wait. That means only four days at sea not five … 26th, 27th, 28th, and 29th. True. Except that we cross the International Date Line on the 28th and get to live it all over again the next day. The first 28th and the second 28th is how we are referring to this phenomenon on the calendar since it has only one block for the that date.

Confused? Don’t worry. Just trust that we have five days at sea before we set foot on land again … 🤞🏻 the weather cooperates!

Today was a busy day and plans to do some catch up port footprints went out the window quite early. I’ll get to them eventually.

In the meantime, here are two of the fun things that ate into our R&R, which is much deserved after two weeks of non-stop port calls.

First up, the Special RTW2023 Auction … with proceeds going to the Insignia Crew Welfare Fund. Emceeing the event was CD Ray … who is not the CD on this segment. He rejoined us in Tokyo to run the special events planned for the RTW passengers on this final segment of the world cruise.

On the auction block were a number of items, including the painting that was displayed at the RTW Event in Argentina; three sets of voyage charts showing our route … hope we make all of the ports that are still ahead of us; a ship’s ensign that was flown on this voyage … signed by the senior staff, including Captain Maro; a number of certificates to take two crew members to dinner at various dining venues … special treat for the crew; a certificate to dine with the Panache Quartet in the GDR; and a certificate to be the CD for a day … under the guidance of CD Dottie. We’ll find out how much was raised in total after the White Elephant Auction, which is planned for 6 July.

The next special event was a RTW dinner … the last one of the voyage … and appropriately offering a delicious Japanese themed menu.

Since there are 374 of us world cruisers, this dinner was presented over two nights in the two specialty dining rooms … Toscana and the Polo Grill. Our invitation was for tonight and we were seated in Polo with our friends, the Gelmans and the Craddocks. Sonia, who was feeling under the weather, was absent and missed by all.

(If interested, you can google the menu selections to see what we ate as describing each here would add to the length of the footprint considerably.)

All in all … a very pleasant and fun day at sea … the cold temps and pea soup thick fog notwithstanding. While I missed not being able to sit out on the veranda, I’ll take cool/cold over hot/humid any time.Read more