Today’s the day. Tonight’s the night!

This post is jointly written by Gabrielle and Nick. There will be another post tomorrow with all the pics!

The plan for last night was to go to The Glass House for a small pop and then go for dinner and have a glass of wine and an early night. You know when you have a plan and it goes out of the window? That was us last night. 

The Glass House is a lovely bar and unique from the other bars on board, in so much as it has an extensive wine list of which you can buy any of the wines by the glass. I chose a Canadian rosé fizz and Nick chose the Miraval rosé. There’s a lovely relaxed atmosphere in the bar. Being Celebration night, we joined a very long queue (28 ahead of us) and decided that while we were waiting (and recognising it’d be a long wait), we’d sample another wine, a Gamay this time. Well, it has to be said, the wine was off, it’d been opened for just that bit too long. The staff apologised profusely and opened a fresh bottle, which was gorgeous. 

All of a  sudden we were somehow at the front of the queue but now had a gorgeous glass of wine. Logic would say we should have simply taken our wines down to the restaurant. Logic wasn’t playing any part in our evening. Let’s give it 5 minutes and then we’ll let them know we’re on our way. 5 minutes came and went, as did 10 minutes. Better say we’re on our way now. Ooooooopppps, we’d missed the boat. Our slot had gone. OK, start again. 23 in the queue. No worries, it’ll probably move as quickly as the last one did. It didn’t. Eventually, we gave up and stayed in the Glasshouse for a lovely meal. Oh, and as the Gamay was so scrummy, we had to sample it again.

We exchanged cards amid Gabrielle’s apologies that mine was addressing “Mark” as the target. Is there something I need to know? She’d discreetly covered up the offending name with a sticker and my name in scrawled biro!

So, off to the destination talk by the ever lovely Michelle, this time on what to expect from the Falklands. She was, as ever, exuberant even when talking about bleak moorlands and battlefields. We’ve really struggled with this stop as the trips that appealed, we can’t do as they involve off-roading in a 4X4. What with Nick’s back and my dodgy hip, it was not advised. Still, we have an excursion planned for when we get there. After all the calm waters of late, today has decided to turn waggy. I’ve got my bands back on as I don’t want to take any chances. Since mid-day yesterday to mid-day today, we’ve travelled 411 nautical miles at an average speed of 17.6 knots, with 292 nautical miles to our next stop tomorrow, in Montevideo, Uruguay, where we stay for 2 days. At mid-day, we were 51 nautical miles south east of Rio Grande and were in fairly shallow waters of 58m, we have 8knot winds, the temperature is 24 degrees and the water temperature is 25 degrees. The ship was pitching fairly strongly at this point and Gabrielle remarked that “You may now kiss the bride” could be followed by a bit of an upheaval!

Back for some breakfast because we were late of course and when we returned, Steevan our cabin steward arrived with a huge bouquet from Becky and Charlie. Absolutely beautiful. He was closely followed by the florist, Mikee, with Gabrielle’s bouquet and my buttonhole - two actually so I could choose: both utterly what we wanted. 

So exercising has been ditched for beautification today. Nail varnish off. Nail varnish on. Hair conditioned. Hair washed, dried and twoofed (technical hairdresser term). Time seems to have contracted and 4pm is racing towards us at a rate of knots. 

So now it’s the afternoon and time has condensed even more as we get prepped. We’ve met the Wedding Planner just before lunch and gave her our rings and collected our sealed envelopes with the words we are going to say to each other. We are to be collected from our cabin at 15:50 to be taken to the Uganda Room, next to the Crow’s Nest bar where Captain Love will be waiting for us. Unless there are icebergs. We’re both confessing to feeling a bit nervous which is crazy when you consider everything we’ve lived through over 25 years!

We wait and 15:50 comes and goes. And then Princess arrives. Yes, really. A lovely Philippina who took us off to the venue and then took on the duty of photographer with my camera. She did a sterling job. 

Captain Love was waiting for us and he was utterly delightful. He took us through the Order of Service and we then, amid some tears and gulps, read our pieces to each other. It was fabulous and then there was champagne!

This was just so lovely and we chatted with Captain Love for quite a while before he went off to resume his duties. Before he left though he invited us to the bridge. What a thrill! BTW, he didn’t pull his weight as far as the pop was concerned so, at the time of writing, we’ve polished off the rest of the bottle and are feeling the earth move. Actually, we have had some fairly substantial wagging of the boat so not all to do with alcohol. 

And now, we’re off to see our lovely server in Glass House before an Indian meal in Sindhu with a nice bottle of wine. Good job we moved tomorrow’s full day trip in Montevideo to the next day!