Day 13 East - 01/14/22 - At Sea to Half Moon Cay

For this sea day, it turned out to be fairly active.  Ian's coffee chat with Neil, the Future Cruise Consultant, was very interesting.  He's from Canada, married to a lady from St. Petersburg, Russia, and living there.  There was lots of discussion about that topic. 

 

At the end of the coffee chat, a lady came up to us and asked me, "Are you Btimmer?" She had been following this thread and my blog.  We enjoyed a very pleasant chat particularly about how this cruise was her first without her husband who passed away about a year ago.  

 

If you're on the ship this cruise or the return voyage and want to meet up, generally for the coffee chat, we sit on the left side of the stage in chairs with a table for our drinks and a roll. At lunch we're usually seated by the sushi bar.  

 

I spent the rest of the morning relaxing before attending Ian's multimedia presentation of the history of HAL.  It's good and I've seen it many, many times. After lunch the pace picked up. First, I enjoyed a towel folding demonstration, then it was the 'Ask the Captain' session.  Captain van der Hoven does these well with grace and an underlying twinkle in his eye and voice.  When asked "What was the percentage of positive results from the required Panama Canal Covid tests?", he didn't pause and replied, "Less than the threshold." Pause. "The more you test the more cases you discover." End of answer.

 

Immediately following the 'Ask the Captain' session we had our required antigen test for sailing the return voyage.  We waited in our room the required 30 minutes following the test and did not receive the dreaded phone call indicating we had tested positive.  We used that time to prepare a 'watch list' of movies to watch on the return voyage.

 

Tonight was a gala night, and we had reservations at the Pinnacle Grill.  Seated at a window seat, my wife had surf & turf while I had the Alaskan King Crab. The Caribbean sunset was gorgeous with iridescent clouds as we sailed off the coast of Cuba.

 

The evening entertainment was the  musical tribute combination of the pianists from Billboard Onboard, the singer from BBKing Blues Cub, and 3 dancers (two guys and a gal) from the Step One Dance Company. Normally there are 6 dancers for this show, and they've not performed since the start of the cruise.  I suspect their group was affected by Covid issues. It was still good.

 

We ended our day (after our typical Deck 9 moon watching walk) watching a documentary on flamingoes in Africa.  It was good.  And so ended a relaxing day at sea.  Tomorrow is a partial sea day bookending snorkeling at Half Moon Cay. The Rotterdam gets to provide our BBQ lunch on shore we share the island with it and they arrive first.




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