20250204 Seabourn Sojourn Grand Africa Cruise Day 71/96 - Sea Day

Grand Africa Cruise Trip Day 71/96 - Sea Day Winning and a little catch-up

We woke up to day 2/6 sea days en route to Benin. We crossed from off the coast of Namibia to off the coast of Angola as we continued on our northerly track. Honestly, these six sea days will all be similar so these next blog entries likely won't be very exciting. Baggo, trivia, art, putting, name that tune, shows, meals - yadda, yadda. I'll do my best to come up with something interesting, but no guarantees.

First, thanks to our friend, Matt. He captured some photos of me when I got called up on stage last night with magician, Fab Fox.

Pick a card and sign your name on it

He shuffled the card into the deck and placed the deck in his mouth

He then moved the deck

And ejected all the cards from his mouth in a waterfall of cards

He then produced a single, folded, slimy card from his mouth

Is that your card? Yes, it was my signed card.

Thanks again to Matt for sharing these with me.

Today, we started with something unusual - another Teddy Tumble. I reported on this back on January 20, 2025, when Cruise Director, Nick and Entertainment Manager, Rhys, conducted the first Teddy Tumble. You can click the link and read about it there, but the long and short of it is that we threw teddy bears from Deck #8 down to Deck #4, trying to get them into a small container. Like last time, only one guest was successful, although Rhys also managed to get one in the container, which was as much a surprise to himself as it was to the rest of us. Once again, everyone had a good time and we got lots of interesting looks from the other guests who happened to walk by the staircase as teddy bears came flying down from above.

Arlona's art was watercolors, starting with a sea lion this morning. 

I think that is an excellent sea lion

This was the photo she used as a guide and I think she nailed it

Trivia went fairly well today with some obscure trivia evading us. The getaways:

• Name the top three richest people in the world, in order, as of today
• We guessed Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Warren Buffet - Musk and Bezos were correct, but #3 is Mark Zuckerberg
• Name the three counties in South America that the equator passes through
• We knew Ecuador and Brazil - the rest of the team advocated hard for Venezuela and we deferred to the majority even though Arlona felt strongly it was Colombia, and of course, it was Colombia
• What actor presented the very first Academy Award in 1929?
• We guessed Charlie Chaplain but it was Douglas Fairbanks
• Because of yesterday's controversy about the busiest airport question, Nick asked two bonus questions today. We got the first - name the timepiece with the fewest moving parts (sundial). The second was to put these four Nobel Peace Prize winners in order based on when they were awarded, from earliest to latest, Desmond Tutu, Jimmy Carter, Mikhail Gorbachev, Mother Teresa
• We were wrong (I didn't record our guess), it was (year added for info):
• Mother Teresa - 1979
• Desmond Tutu - 1984
• Mikhail Gorbachev - 1990
• Jimmy Carter - 2002

Only 30 points separate first and third so we're in the hunt. 

They moved Baggo to the afternoon and we participated along with many other guests. 

Throwing left-handed

It was tough today with non-dominant hand tosses and between-the-legs tosses to sideways boards. We weren't in the running but we still had fun.

Arlona, wrapping up an under-leg toss

Arlona wasn't inspired by this afternoon's painting project so she planned her own. She found a photo from our trip out west last October and painted that.

The photo

Arlona's recreation

Our Name That Tune team finally broke through today. Out of 41 possible points (20 songs, 20 artists, and one bonus point for an original author of one song), we missed only two song titles. We identified all the artists and the one song author for 39/41 and the win. We had a lot of fun with that today.

After pre-dinner drinks, we attended a hosted dinner with our Hotel manager, Harry Ter Horst. He is a super-interesting guy. Another couple of friends joined us and we had an enjoyable evening.

Cruise Director, Nick's boss, the corporate Cruise Director John Barron joined the ship in Cape Town and will be with us until Barcelona. Tonight, he was the featured performer, entertaining the guests with songs and commentary sprinkled with rapid-fire jokes. 

It was another good day. Tomorrow will be more of the same as we continue to sail northeast along the coast of Angola.