World Cruise Day 16/152 - Time travel and flushing our troubles away - if only we could...

Cruise day: 16/152
Ports days: 5
Sea days: 11
Countries: 4
Continents: 1
Ports: 5

Let's start off today with the Captain's noon report on COVID - it's all good news today.  No new cases since 1/6/2022 - woo!  Our onboard count is four passengers and four crew in isolation and recovering plus two in protective quarantine.  Numbers are down.  Protocols are working.  All good news!

This morning, we awoke as time travelers as the clocks were an hour earlier than they would have been yesterday.  This was the third hour that we have fallen back - a natural result of cruising from east to west.  We are now synchronized with Pacific Standard Time or three hours earlier than when we left Ft. Lauderdale in the Eastern time zone.  This trend will continue as we cruise west until we cross the international dateline when we really will time-travel, but this time, into the future!

It is a cool day today with temperatures in the low 70s. Couple that with clouds in the morning and a decent breeze, both from the wind itself as well as our 16-knot cruising speed and we Floridians are a little chilly.  

We have had an ongoing issue with our room since boarding, and it involves this little button.

If you're not a cruiser, you might not recognize this button.  But, if you have ever cruised, you know it, and probably hate it.  This is the button that flushes the toilet.  Toilets on a cruise ship use a suction system that evacuates the bowl with a loud sucking sound.  There are stories of people that reached back and activated it while still seated on the throne and they're still stuck there and sailing today.

On to the issue.  Since we boarded, we have had occasions where the bathroom had a certain sewer-like aroma wafting out when we opened the door.  We, and by "we", I mean "me" - Garry - since I'm the one that gets up in the middle of the night.  Anyway, we noticed another issue in the middle of the night when the toilet would routinely not flush at all.  If I held the button, I could hear the water moving in the wall, and sometimes, eventually, after 30 - 40 seconds, it would flush.  Usually, in the morning, it would work, but then, we would get the sewer gas smell again.

We talked with our cabin steward and then the Explorer's desk to get something done.  Finally, this afternoon, the toilet stopped working completely.  We called and they said they would send someone up.  After waiting 45 minutes with no action, I called again. They told me that now, it wasn't our toilet, but the entire toilet system on the ship was down.  Wow.  About an hour later, they called and said it should be working again.  It was, but that still didn't address the specific issues with ours.  A few minutes later, we heard a noise outside our cabin, and then, we heard the toilet cycle a few times.  A short time after that, the desk called and said we should be fixed.  We will see how that goes...tonight.

Speaking of plumbing...

The shower control is two-sided.  Volume control is on the left and temperature control is on the right.  Here is a photo of the temperature control.

In the photo above, the temperature control is set slightly above the ice cube setting.  This is where water will come out, but is almost slushy as it is so cold.  Now, look at the next photo.

This one shows the setting where the water temperature is roughly 1.7-degrees cooler than the molten magma that makes up the Earth's core.  Can you see the difference?  No?  Well, that's because a movement of a fraction of a fraction of fraction of an inch makes all that difference.  It is a little frustrating, but we've learned to make due.  Take this as a warning to others who board the ship.

As for the fun today, we had our last bridge lesson for the moment.  We will redo the first several lessons with the new folks that come on in Los Angeles and then progress to new material.  

Triva was a little hit and miss today.  We got 10/15.  The original cost of a McDonald's hamburger? $0.15.  In what decade was the game Monopoly introduced?  1930s.

We spent several hours in the World Cafe today.  After both lunch and dinner, we spent an hour or more talking with people we have met on this cruise.  To us, that's a great part of cruising - getting to meet people that you might otherwise never have the opportunity to meet and spend time with.

Tonight, the Captain, who has been completely invisible the entire cruise, we're guessing as part of COVID protocol, is hosting a farewell gathering to make the end of the transit phase of this cruise. We aren't ending after the transit phase so we're not going. We found it interesting that we received a cruise evaluation form in our room today, especially since we didn't book this phase, we booked the entire world cruise.  There are some parts of this first part of the world cruise that certainly don't feel like a world cruise.

Tomorrow, we will be attending a webinar explaining the upcoming itinerary changes.  We remain optimistic as we spoke with someone knowledgeable on the crew that said they were hopeful for favorable changes.  We'll know after 10 AM PST tomorrow. We've heard pretty credible rumors about the itinerary changes, but rather than spread potential misinformation, I'll wait and actually communicate facts after tomorrow's announcement.

Keep your fingers crossed that tomorrow's announcement is good news.