All at sea with extreme ironing

A sea day today, so the morning dawned bright and early - around 7:30am, which is astonishingly early for us when we don’t have to get up - and we planned our activities. The day began with Gabrielle doing her exercises and me ensuring that Amy (her Personal Trainer) was aware that it was happening. Given the lack of equipment for this workout, Gabrielle resorted to two 500ml tins of water as weights and waved them around with determination and to great effect. As she normally uses two 5kg weights, this is rather letting her off easily!

The order of the day included laundry, which we have mentioned before. While Gabrielle showered, post-workout, I headed for Deck 11, but the laundry room was full to busting with urgently busy people who no more wanted to be doing that particular job than I did. There was no room at the inn, so I headed down to Deck 9 where a second laundry was less inhabited, but all the machines were taken except one, which had a sign on it saying “Out of Order - Do Not Use”.

“Oh, ignore that love,” said a lady who was busy ironing. “I’ve just used it and it was fine - just a bit noisy. When I finished someone came in and slapped that notice on it, but it should be fine.” If it isn’t I’m pointing the finger at you, I responded. She told me to do it! So I did it. And it was fine. Then breakfast, gazing out at the rather gloomy, muggy day outside with air temperature of 27C and sea temperature 26C. The weather looked quite threatening although it cleared up with sunshine later in the day. We breakfasted, came back down to the laundry, flung the washed clothes in the dryer and then headed for the Promenade Deck to do our daily 2 miles. The weather made us sweat but we soon knocked off the necessary seven laps, despite a workman closing off part of the deck for maintenance.

Back up to the room (exciting this, isn’t it?) where we had the reward of coffee and then did our ExtraMile Board Meeting notes. Then the Captain came on the tannoy to tell us that since leaving Rio we had covered 310 nautical miles at a speed of 17.5 knots and that we still had 710 nautical miles until Montevideo, the day after tomorrow.

At midday we were on a parallel with Santa Caterina and, since we left Southampton, we’ve done 5,522 nautical miles. The Captain was keen to tell us that, unlike early sailors, we didn’t have to worry about guessing where we were because we had GPS, also known as God Positioning the Ship (within 2 metres accuracy).

So, grabbing the next load of washing plus some ironing that needed doing, we headed back to the laundry. The drying came out and we then indulged in a bit of extreme ironing (not often you get to iron at 17 knots in the South Atlantic) - two of us working at the load and knocking it off in record time, before heading off for a well-deserved lunch. And you thought it was all just lying around, sipping Margaritas and bronzing our perfect bodies?

No, that was in the afternoon after all the washing was folded and put away and we had arranged our balcony to our liking. Then, out came the books and we sat down to a good long read. Gabrielle is on another Lucy Foley - The Guest List - a really rollicking good holiday read. I’m on Alastair Campbell’s The Path to Power - fairly weighty but quite gripping. Nearly forgot, at 1pm I had an date with destiny - well, actually with Sunamth who cut my hair so I look sharp tonight and tomorrow.

Tonight is formal night so we have to frock up and make ourselves look even more stunning than usual. Gabrielle has a beautiful dress, broadly in the colours of the Brazilian flag, whereas I shall be rocking the Bond look with a white tux, black shirt and white bow tie (with a cat on it - I know, kitsch). No fabulous entertainment this evening so it looks like it’ll be alcohol and staring glumly across our glasses at each other. Oh, and there is The Event tomorrow. More of that in due course.