All at sea

January 6-12, 2018

I doubt you’re sufficiently interested to know precisely when I took these shots. While you might like to know where, I’ve lost track. They were all taken sometime, somewhere, all at sea.

Going in chronological order, next up on my circumnavigational re-cap would be the week I spent cruising the Pacific between LA and the Marquesas. So, for this report, you get clouds. You get sunsets. You get a fish.

There was so little to report during that crossing, I kicked off the ‘Name That Cloud’ competition. Here’s the first:

I was indoors, shooting through the restaurant window...

Round about mid-January, I gave you a 31-day tally of all the medical mishaps onboard. After that one post, I stopped my Police Blotter reportings because I had been advised that some of my intel was fake news.

Nevertheless: In January, after reading my tally, my shipboard friend Mark had told me: ‘The man that told me about the first two deaths (Nicaragua and Guatemala departures) told me that Viking has anticipated 40 persons being taken off the ship by London (including lame and dead).’

So... I never had confirmation of those two deaths, but I am sure about the man who died in the sauna. That was indisputable, since it was a passenger who found him. I also know that we started with 888 passengers. We ended up with 837. That means 51 left the ship — death, illness, injury, bad behavior. First to be kicked off for poor deportment was a couple fighting in their stateroom. Then came the Battle in the Laundromat. Even if I told you this one before, you’re going to hear it again:

Male Passenger A is doing his laundry in one of the public laundrettes, found on every deck. The washer has washed. Now he needs a dryer. One has stopped but still has Someone Else’s now-dry clothes inside, and Someone Else is nowhere to be found. Passenger A removes the dry clothes, puts them on the counter, and puts his wet clothes into said dryer.

Enter Male Passenger B. ‘YOU TOUCHED MY STUFF!!!!’ or words to that effect. A heated exchange follows. They take it out into the corridor. Heated exchange continues. Female Passenger C opens her stateroom door and demands, ‘What the .... ???’ One or both Male Passengers turns on her. She slams her door, and calls Security. Upshot? Male Passenger A and Male Passenger B and their wives were all dumped off the ship at the next port. That’s how we lost 4 passengers in one swell foop.

Now, for more Comic Relief, here I am on January 11 at the Crossing the Equator ceremony. I turned from a Pollywog into a Shellback when I kissed a fish, swam a pool, and drank a glass of foul-tasting Aquavit: