Day 111 - Tuesday April 18

Sea Day photos
position at 8:15am: N35 04.33 latitude W9 00.47 longitude
(480 NE of Madeira, Spain)
temperature: 61F, mostly sunny with a swell coming from the north
distance since FLL: 35,470 miles
Today was a lazy sea day. Debbie slept in as expected though with some interruption. Clay left the closet door open before he left the cabin early and it swung and groaned and slammed until Debbie realized Clay was gone and got up and closed it. Clay skipped walking early and instead walked around 2pm in the afternoon. It was a cool (about 65F), sunny and breezy on deck when he walked. We entered the Atlantic about midnight last night and we all know it. In 9am Vords of Visdom, Captain Dag said we are in typical North Atlantic swells and the ride will just be rough now. He was funny this morning. He described where we are sailing by saying that to the North was England and that if you were looking really hard you could see Antarctica to the south. Clay wanted to attend Roger's port talk on Funchal, Madeira at 9am. He went to breakfast early and only had a short intersect with Debbie's breakfast in LaVeranda. Debbie had to answer lots of questions from our regular waitstaff about this. Lots of questions and comments, too funny. It was very rough motion up and aft in LaVeranda this morning and many people were feeling it and had to be helped out. The same thing happened as Debbie sat in the hall in front of Horizon Lounge waiting to get back in the cabin. People bounced off the walls trying to get back there for the cooking demo. Then later, some had to be helped out. We are in it now. Debbie had a surprise during her breakfast alone. After Clay left, she found herself facing a couple that had ridden jetskis with us in Bora Bora. (The morning Clay sprained his ankle and then dumped himself, Debbie and Bob in the Pacific Ocean and fried the waterproof digital camera by not sealing the waterproof case properly.) She walked over and asked if they remembered. Of course they did. It was a favorite day of theirs. She asked if they had been onboard the whole time. The answer was no, Debbie was relieved because she would have felt terrible if they had been aboard all this time and after that day and lunch together, she had never recognized them again. It turned out that they were aboard early and the husband was very depressed when they had to leave. He said he was always sad to leave a cruise, and that he had really wanted to do the World Cruise and she didn't. He said that the last 3-4 days they were on that he was so depressed about leaving when he knew that we were going on. So, a few weeks ago he called RSSC and got on a waitlist to do this cruise. They left for Rome on a last minute basis. This was a little mysterious at first. We got our Segment 6, World Cruise Passenger Directory and this is the least attended. We have only 469 passengers onboard for this one. Then Debbie remembered Captain Dag talking about how Voyager would go into drydock soon and they would actually start replacing cabin carpets on the Atlantic crossing. So, even though there must be a lot of empty cabins, they probably did not want to sell them for that reason. We suppose. Anyway, Debbie told them about our camera failure and they offered to mail us copies of their pictures one day. They still had their waterproof disposable camera and had not developed the pictures yet. We will keep our fingers crossed to get some good photos of that day. How lucky is this? Also, in the morning Laurens walked by as we were working on posting this from the wifi hotspot in the hallway in front of Horizons and Debbie asked him if it was true that he had loaded NO local beers from Italy or Spain. He tried the, "they have local beers there, I don't think so" routine that had worked so well for the last segment through the Middle East. Debbie busted him on that and Patrick, who was with Laurens, said they could not load every thing local from all over the world. Laurens got out his pad and wrote down the names of the beers Debbie gave him from Italy and said he was making a list. Debbie told him laughingly, first item: enlarge ship's storage areas.
At 11am in the Constellation Theater, there was a "Town Hall Meeting:Lets Talk Ship-Stuff" with Captain Dag Dvergastein and Christian Sauleau, EVP of RSSC Operations, and moderated by Jamie Logan, Cruise Director. Clay went while Debbie finished up posting the journal photos. (We don't know if Voyager has any statistics on the free Internet usage and its impact on bandwidth, but it seems to be getting slower to us. This was a presentation by Christian of the marketing/branding change to Regent followed by questions and answers. The only real news was the changes that are being made to the 2007 World Cruise itinerary. They are not going to Taiwan which was originally scheduled. People commented that they thought Saigon was a better port than DaNang, but the Captain stood by the schedule of doing DaNang so people could see Hue. They also said that there would likely be other adjustments to the 2007 WC as things get closer. The other big new was that as they travel east next year and regularly lose hours instead of gaining them, they will change the time in the middle of the afternoon instead of at 2am as they have done this year. This is apparently to keep people from losing sleep. Capt. Dag also made the point that next time they cross the Atlantic like this, they will take the Southern route, by dropping down to the Canary Islands before going across. He said that is usually a smoother ride. Too bad they didn't decide to give us the smoother ride instead of heading for Bermuda. They are deciding the 2008 WC itinerary now and plan to pass out a questionaire. All the ships are to go into drydock at some point in the future with the Navigator being the next one to do so. Also, the soap bars will get bigger in the future. There was not much else covered that really qualifies as news. The meeting lasted until about 12:15pm. Clay got back to the cabin as an announcement was being made for a Code Blue in the Constellation Theater. No idea what happened in there.
There was another Tex-Mex buffet on the Pool Deck at noon today. As much as Debbie wanted a burrito, she decided it was just too rough and she would be too uncomfortable up there, so we went to Compass Rose and had sandwiches. The ride was really rough and Debbie was not feeling well. We both had headaches and Debbie took some drugs to just knock herself out and spent the afternoon in bed. Clay did his deck walk in the afternoon and followed it with a Beck's Light beer at the Pool Bar. Clay is thinking that he should have had this walking schedule all along. Debbie thinks that would have been a bad idea! Clay says the beer was very low cal-low carb. Whatever.
We went to dinner tonight in Latitudes. They have the new theme of Spanish Bodega now. It was fun. The decorations are great. The food was good and plentiful, except the serving size of Clay's Red Snapper and shrimp. (Picture of the menu posted.) The live entertainment theme was the Kitchen Cabaret has carried over into this segment having live entertainment as well. The entertainment was a set played by 3 members of the Voyager Quintet. There was a drummer, keyboard player and guitarist. They played some songs, then the played a few more songs to accompany the singer Amapola. Then, Frankie Holiday's daughter Judy, who performs as Aisha the belly dancer came on and to recorded music did some Flamenco dances. She came out among the tables and posed for pictures. At one point, she put a hat on Dionne's head and pulled her onto the stage. (Dionne is the WC social hostess and a former dancer.) It was all enjoyable. The big news here was that Tom and Lillian were seated next to us! (Pictures posted for Pam and Bonnie. Enjoy!)
Also in the news, the 3D puzzle is almost complete. Only the roofs of the buildings remain. Evidently, it was not as hard as we thought it would be for the puzzle people, though we suspect that the 2 Spanish boys we saw mostly working on it have done most of the work. Good work. (Picture posted.) And, we received the Passenger Directory for this segment and this is the lowest attended segment of all with only 469 passengers listed Rome to Ft. Lauderdale. To recap the segment passenger counts: full World Cruise is 280, segment 1 was 623, segment 2 was 585, segment 3 was 571, segment 4 was 604, segment 5 was 611 and segment 6 is 469.
So, it really was a slow day at sea with too much rocking to be too active. We hope all the people that have been complaining that they can't even tell they are on a ship are very happy today. Tomorrow is one of our last 2 port days in Funchal, Madeira. We are scheduled to dock at 8am. There will be a complimentary shuttle bus into town here. The WC Special Event, a Farewell Soiree, is to be held at 2pm til sailing time. So, that really only gives us a half day of leisure time there. We have been here before so we plan to take it easy and stroll. We do plan to take the cable car up to the Monte and the wicker toboggan back down. We did not do that last time and since it is the thing to do, we will try it.
Sea Day photos