April 17, Sleeping at Sea

Second full day at sea and about all I am doing is sleeping. Patrise seems to be going about things in a normal rhythm, but I am sleeping – a lot! She estimates that I got six (6) hours’ worth of naptime. Can you believe that? I think it is a combination of weariness and continuing to fight this intestinal bug, although seems to be diminishing gradually. I can’t wait until it goes away.

After breakfast, we planned to go to Deck 15 and walk the track. However, I was not feeling up to it, so we returned to the room. Thereupon, I proceeded to have the first of my naps. I started sleeping about 9:30 or 10, I think, and I did not wake up until 12:30. Then, I was ready to go to the track, so we did. We began walking, but it was so windy that Patrise urged us to get off of the track and return inside. She was right, although my resistant self would have continued against the wind, if I had been left to my own devices. The wind and the waves were rising, and the ship was experiencing more rocking. However, the game was called due to inclement weather, so to speak. How right she was on insisting that we abandon the outdoor walk idea. Shortly after we returned inside, the captain ordered everyone inside, had the security crew clear all the outside areas of passengers, and subsequently locked the ship doors to prevent anyone going accessing outside areas.

Wondering what to do with ourselves, we wandered into the SeaPlex area and played Fuzeball: that game which has wooden players on sticks arranged like opposing soccer teams: you toss a ball to start play, then each human operator moves and twirls his/her players to try to kick the ball into the opposing net (just like soccer). I had not played Fuzeball, since my college days, but I played a lot of it then. Patrise had only played once or twice in her life, so I had a bit of an advantage. Still, we had fun.

After one game of Fuzeball, we made our way to the ship’s workout room. Each of us walked a treadmill for several minutes, then we worked on various weight machines. After this, we went to the Solarium restaurant for a late lunch, about 1:30pm, then back to our room. Again, I went to sleep, this time napping for a good three hours before waking. We watched a little television and read books. At 6:50, we went to the Chops Grille for our dinner. We had actually made a reservation for it, before boarding the ship. It so happened that our reservation was for 7:30pm rather than 7pm, but they sat us nevertheless. The dinner was fine, but definitely not outstanding. We split a ribeye steak, but found the preparation was not up to our expectations. (All steaks are now being compared to the steak I had at 6Head on the wharf in Sydney: the very first night we were there, when we had dinner with our LA-Sydney seatmate, Doug Ward. Refer back to the second blog entry, in which the serendipity of meeting another Doug who was also an engineer was described at length. At any rate, that 6Head steak was so outstanding, that nothing has come close since.)

After dinner we attended a 9pm showing about the new technology on the newest ships in the Royal Caribbean fleet, including our Ovation of the Seas liner. It was a thirty-minute presentation about the millions of dollars the company has put into its entertainment technology. Here are some pictures from that presentation.

We returned to the room, got dressed for bed, watched the end of The Abyss, an early James Cameron film – James Cameron, director known for his blockbuster films Titanic, Avatar, and Avatar: The Way of Water. Then we went to sleep anticipating tomorrow’s activities. We will set port in one of the islands off of Auckland in an area known as “The Bay of Islands.” Patrise will go into town, while Doug will participate in an excursion to see one of the famous glowworm caves found only in New Zealand.