World Cruise Day 49/152 - Sea Day - They stamped us! Whale how about that?

Cruise day: 49/152
Ports days: 16
Sea days: 33
Countries: 5
Continents: 2
Ports: 10 

The internet started working again today, allowing me to finish up yesterday's post.  Beyond bad satellite coverage, we heard that one of our two antennas is malfunctioning, so we hope that gets fixed soon.

The skies cleared as we headed north from Cape Horn yesterday so I was hoping for a nice, sunny day today.  Nope.  Overcast with temps in the 50s.  Again.  Speaking of the 50s, the captain has been reporting that the water temperature here is also in the mid-50s.  That's some chilly swimming.  The captain also reported that they brought the official Cape Horn passport stamp onto the ship and have stamped all our passports with the Cape Horn stamp, proving that we had sailed Cape Horn.  So there - you can't doubt me - I have proof! 

I could see rain off to the west from our balcony. It made the sky look pretty interesting as it looked like the rain was falling up high but possibly dissipating before it hit the sea.

We had our typical sea day morning with a later breakfast and then bridge lessons. Afterward, we play bridge for another 45 minutes with our class partners, Steve & Kathy.  

Before trivia, the captain made his regular noon sea day announcement with our position, the weather, heading, sea depth, and such.  He also confirmed that we are holding steady with a single case of COVID which was good news.  I found it interesting that the sea depth here about 100 miles off the west coast of the Falkland Islands is only about 700 feet.  We had been used to hearing sea depths on 25,000 feet or more in the Pacific. Not that 700-feet is shallow, but when compared to around five miles, well, you get the idea. It really puts the size of the Pacific in perspective. At roughly half the size of the Pacific, the average depth of the Atlantic is around 12,000 feet whereas the Pacific averages about 14,000 feet.

Then it was time to get smoked in a really tough trivia today.  Our failures:

• Who wrote the song, I will always love you made famous by Whitney Houston?
• Dolly Parton
• What member of the cat family does not have retractable claws?
• Cheetah
• What year did Margaret Thatcher become Prime Minister?
• 1979
• Whose figure did Walt Disney model Tinkerbell after?
• Marilyn Monroe
• Who was the shortest-serving US President?
• Harrison
• What was the Beatles' first record?
• Love Me Do
• Mr. Cat Poop is the Chinese translation of which Jack Nicholson movie title?
• As Good as it Gets
• Bonus tie-breaker question: How many Disney princesses are there?
• 12 - Snow White, Cinderella, Aurora, Ariel, Belle, Jasmine, Pocahontas, Mulan, Tiana, Rapunzel, Merida, and Moana

Lunch featured their usual assortment of interesting foods.  Today, however, they added a chips-and-salsa station with several salsas as well as a variety of chips.

We tried the mango salsa.  The chips were all made fresh.  They featured:

• Parsnip chips
• Sweet potato chips
• Pita chips
• Corn tortilla chips
• Beet chips

It was a fun addition to lunch. They always try to do something creative with every lunch. We had another special feature with lunch today - a whale!  We were sitting with Jim & Nancy when suddenly, Jim cried out, "Whale!"  Sure enough, what looked like a humpback was swimming in the opposite direction, right off the port side.  We saw three distinct spouts from the whale before it disappeared off the back of the ship.  There wasn't enough time to get a photo since we were going in opposing directions.  It was our first time seeing a whale in the wild other than on a specific whale watching trip.  It was really cool to see.

Arlona's art class project today was creating a dreamcatcher. She of course chose appropriate colors for our house and it turned out great.

With a slow afternoon, we took the opportunity to run a load of laundry.  We know that it will get more challenging to get available washers and dryers once we hit the port-heavy portion of this cruise.

We headed up to the World Cafe for dinner.  We were pleasantly surprised to find surf and turf prepped and ready for the taking.  We both grabbed the ready-to-take lobster tail atop a filet mignon that was doused with butter.  For good measure, I also had a wonderfully tasty scallop on the shell as well as some super-tasty ribs and fries.  It was a really good dinner.

After dinner, we headed over to the Explorer's Bar for a quick drink.  That plan fell apart because we started talking with fellow Villagers, Allan & Gloria, and spent the next nearly hour and a half having a wonderful conversation. It made for a really nice way to spend an evening.  Once we were all talked out, we headed back to our stateroom for the night.

Two more sea days to go until we visit Montevideo, Uruguay.