Day 51 - Friday Feb 17 Day 2 at sea

Day 51 photos

position at 7:00am: N0 9.04 latitude E119 11.20 longitude
(~700 miles SE of Kota Kinabualu, Malaysia on the island of Borneo, our next port)
temperature: 83F, 100% humidity, mostly cloudy
distance since FLL: 18,373 miles

It was warm and humid on deck this morning with clouds hiding the sunrise. The seas are relatively calm, but there is some modest vibration felt in our cabin. Our speed is above 18 knots as the captain tries to make up for the slow speed yesterday afternoon. Making this in a 40-50 KM/h headwind is probably contributing to the vibration.

We have entered the Celebes Sea and it is as smooth as glass. There is still quite a bit of debris floating but not as much as yesterday. The flying fish have really been letting rip in the smooth water. After they get kicked up by the ship's wake, there are no waves to stop them and they sometimes just skim along until they are almost out of sight.

The Captain's Vords of Visdom were that we would not arrive in Kota Kinabalu in the middle of the day tomorrow after all. We will not dock before 7pm for our overnight stay. So it will be after dark before we get there and it is unlikely we will go ashore then. We crossed the equator early this morning on the way to Kota Kinabalu, bypassing Sandakan on the way. Last night, we received a note from the tour desk describing a new tour that was added for Kota Kinabalu. It is a trip to a new, as yet, unopened zoo to see orangutangs and proboscis monkeys. This replaces some of the tours that were to be done in Sandakan. We will try to sign up for this tour this morning. This means we will be doing two ship's tours in Kota Kinabalu. And, since we will not arrive until after nightfall, we will not have any independent time, or probably shopping opportunities here either. So, no souvenirs or gifts from Indonesia at all.

We went up on deck about 1:10pm for the 1:15pm Equator Crossing ceremony, but did not stay because of the wind and rain. They did go through with it, but with a smaller crowd due to the weather. They did have some inflatible sharks floating in the pool, which was new.

Tonight was formal night and the seven Seas Society Cocktail party. At the party, Capt. Dag announced that we would not be going to Phuket, Thailand. The reason is due to the dock opening available for Rangoon. In order to be there for more than a 7pm to 11am stay, we hadto get there a day earlier. The only way the Captain knew how to do this was to skip the stop in Phuket. He also annouced that as of now, the security for our stop in Manila would not allow the crew to have their families visit the ship. This will be a big disappointment as there are a lot of Filippino crew members. Dag said he is still working on this problem and hoped to get some kind of solution for it, such as a pavilion, or large tent, set up outside the gate/fence/secure area of the port where we dock.

When we got back to our cabin, we had World Cruise presents waiting for us. There were two leather shopping/tote bags along with some special turn-down chocolates. The Daily Passages shows a dock time tomorrow of 8pm. Capt. Dag did say at his speech to the SSS cocktail party attendees that there was another ship docked at the berth we are assigned until 7 pm and that is why we will not arrive any earlier. The Daily Passages for tomorrow list our dock time as 8 pm.

Day 51 photos