World Cruise Day 50/152 - Sea Day ramblings, 33.333% gone, flybys, and a sunset, finally

Cruise day: 50/152
Ports days: 16
Sea days: 34
Countries: 5
Continents: 2
Ports: 10

Yet another sea day.  Yet another routine.  Bridge, trivia.  Arlona wasn't interested in the arts and crafts this afternoon as they were making bookmarks. Try as we might, we just can't get a physical bookmark to work on a Kindle. :-) 

Temps aren't on the rise yet and still hovering in the mid-50s.  The day has turned out to be sunny but it didn't start that way.  Here are three panoramas with the back of the ship on the left and the front on the right.

It was nice and sunny early on but we left that weather behind us.  As you can see from the right side of the three images, we were heading into dark skies.  The rain dumped hard for a while, but eventually, we sailed out into sunny, blue skies.  Nice to see, even with the chilly temperatures.

This is where we are at midday.  We are a little more than halfway from Cape Horn to Montevideo, Uruguay.

Now, for our trivia results today.  Yikes. Seven successes and eight failures.  I'm no expert but I don't think that was a passing grade today.  Our failures:

• What musical featured the song, All That Jazz?
• Chicago (We thought it came from the movie All That Jazz - doh)
• What is the only country to have a flag featuring exactly six stars?
• Australia (We took a shot at Uruguay since we're heading there)
• What is the closest living relative to the T-Rex?
• Chicken (We guessed crocodile over my objection that it should be a bird)
• Who first discovered Jupiter's moons?
• Gallileo (I talked us into Kuiper)
• How many letters are there in the German alphabet?
• 30 - the best guess came from a team who said "17" as there are 17 letters in "the German alphabet" - nice try, no cigar
• What part of the body is the "hallux"?
• Big toe (We guessed "throat" for no good reason)
• Chorophobia is the fear of what?
• Dancing (We guessed "music")
• What fruit is known as the "Love Apple"?
• Tomato
• Intelligence is knowing that a tomato is a fruit
• Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad
• Genius is realizing that a Bloody Mary is technically a fruit smoothie

You may have noticed the day count today - day #50 of our 152-day adventure.  For the math-challenged, one-third of 152 is 50.66666.  What that means is that precisely 2/3 of the way through today, we will hit the one-third point of our trip.  2/3 of 24 hours is 16 hours, so that would be around 4PM today.  Of course, we didn't start the trip at midnight, we aren't finishing at midnight, we've changed timezones, yadda, yadda, yadda.  OK, so it isn't precisely at 4PM today, but close enough.  The bottom line is that today, sometime, we hit the 33.333% mark and have 66.667% to go.

How do we feel about that?  Conflicted.  First, we really haven't been to that many places or seen that much.  Let's face it, we're 50 days in and have only been in port 16 of those days.  But, we've had some amazing sea days, especially the Chilean fjords and Cape Horn.  But still, we've been sailing a lot and exploring a little.  That isn't going to change any time soon.  We're at sea tomorrow, then back-to-back ports in Uruguay, and then back out to sea for nine straight sea days.  That will put us at day #62 with only 18 port days. We'll have a day in the Cape Verde islands, a couple more sea days, a day in Portugal, and a couple more sea days.  Then, we'll start pounding the ports and closing the ratio of sea days to port days. By the time it is all said and done, we'll be in port about ten more days that we will have been at sea.

Another part of the conflicted feeling is that this has gone by really quickly, yet, it seems like forever since we've been home.  Odd how that works.  Talking with other guests, one of the big fears we all have is that once we're back home, we'll go out to eat and then walk out without paying, like we've been doing for the past several months.  We'll have to watch that.  We'll also be a little disappointed when we get up and stumble out into the kitchen that there won't be a huge spread of delicious choices for us for breakfast every day.  It will be back to Eggos in the toaster.  Ah, first-world problems, I know.

Enough rambling.

The captain, in his noon sea day report, confirmed we are still holding with one COVID case on the ship.  So far, the quarantined close contacts remain free of COVID, so that's encouraging.  Mask-wearing, hand-washing, sanitizing, and daily saliva PCR tests all continue on.

We had a small issue with our return flights from Stockholm on 5/25 so we went and talked with the Guest Services Manager, Mara. She fired off an email to check. By the time we got to our room she was calling to tell us that United had recently canceled our flights and they had a new itinerary for us. Now, instead of Stockholm-->Newark business class and Newark-->Orlando economy, we are flying Stockholm-->Frankfurt-->Orlando all business class. Nice!

The captain mentioned that there were a bunch of Chinese fishing vessels in the area.  We spotted some in the distance.  More interesting, though were these. 

I don't know for sure what they are, but I'm guessing they are some kind of marker for the fishing vessels.  Perhaps submerged traps?  I'm sure someone reading this will know.

I was able to grab a few decent bird shots today.  The albatrosses don't seem to like getting close to the ship.  They mainly stay off to the side, sometimes crossing the bow or stern. I think these are immature black-browed albatrosses.  Their wingspan can range from 6'7" to 7'10".

Giant petrels, however, have no issue getting up close and personal. These are also not small birds with an approximate 7-foot wingspan.

It was noodle bar night in the World Cafe. Arlona enjoyed dry dan dan noodles while I had shrimp fried rice.  Both were very good. I also tried a small piece of the pork belly offering.  It was incredibly moist and delicious.

For dessert, neither of us could resist this delicious chocolate cake, accompanied, of course, with a generous scoop of chocolate gelato.

The skies have been overcast a lot lately, so it was a treat tonight to sit on the balcony, even with it a little chilly, and watch the sunset.

After dinner, I worked with the General Manager and Guest Services Manager and have put together a meet and mingle for the ten Villagers that are on this cruise.  For those unfamiliar, we live in The Villages, Florida - the largest retirement community in the world.  As it turns out, there are ten of us - five couples - on this cruise.  None of us knew each other before this cruise and none of us booked together.  I figure we can get a group photo and perhaps get a story in our local paper upon our return.  We'll be doing that on the 16th.  Viking will provide some appetizers and we have a private room set up for dinner.  It should be nice. Plus, The Restaurant will be serving lobster tail, lamb shank, and several other goodies that evening, so it should be a good culinary night.

Viking does a great job catering to groups on the ship.  We attended another meet and mingle set up by another guest for everyone that communicated with each other on Cruise Critic before the cruise.  The fact that Viking is so accommodating speaks volumes about their customer care and desire to provide a top-quality cruise experience.  I'll report on the event once it happens.

It is now after 4PM, so that means our cruise is officially more than 1/3 complete.  Happy and sad, but hey - we still have 102 more days to go, and I think 66 of those will be spent in port.  One more sea day tomorrow and then - Montevideo, Uruguay.  The middle third of the cruise starts now.