Bridge privilege

The big girl pants moment

It was a Glass House type of evening last night. Well, we hadn’t had our fix of the lovely Janice for a few days and she’s always a delight to interact with. Then off to dinner in the restaurant where, yet again, there was a commotion on our arrival. Not due to what either of us was wearing, (on this occasion) but a fantastic display from 10 or so Commersons dolphins leaping around not far from the ship. No one cared that their dinner was going cold, we simply couldn’t miss this bit of nature. No evening entertainment interested us, so a “quiet” night in was planned. But before that, after a fairly bland meal (for me), we decided to give Raffles a go, as it has to be said, I rather fancied another glass whilst watching the night finally close in. Book reading and series-watching features when we’re not doing the late-night entertainment. If you haven’t seen it, we’ve now finished watching Bad Sisters. It’s dark humour and gleefully murderous. So our quiet nights in now are watching the series This is Going to Hurt.

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. 

Night breezes, Steevan and flying fish

From noon yesterday to noon today we have travelled 338 nautical miles at an average speed of 14 knots. It’s a little bit waggy right now with a 2 to 3-metre swell, but thankfully we’re going slowly and there’s no need for my wristbands. We’ve got 268 nautical miles to go to our next stop, Mindelo, Cape Verde. It’s a bank holiday in Cape Verde tomorrow so I have no idea if this means it’ll be deathly quiet or buzzing. We’ll see. What I do know is that we get an extra hour in bed, which is just as well as our trip sets off at 8.30 tomorrow. 

It emerges ...

After the long dark night of the soul, we have emerged into the sunlit uplands at 19 degrees C and a slow swell with a lower wind. We have the door of our cabin open onto the balcony and the sun is shining. We've just completed an energetic walk of over two miles around the Promenade Deck, knocking over grannies as we powered along. 

As the storm grows stronger

We made it to dinner ... just, because as the afternoon progressed so the waves got higher. At the time of writing this (20:15 UK) the ship is heeling from side to side and there are many things on the move. The latest has been a drawer in the next door cabin which is repeatedly opening and closing. We're hoping that the occupants are not night owls!

We're in!

Somehow we have made it on board. Our first huge thanks go to Nick and Sue for bringing us to the ship. Not a bat of an eyelid as we produced yet one more suitcase. Blimey, there are a lot of suitcases for this trip. But the porter who took our suitcases away for us, was delighted to tell us that we weren't the most excessive. He'd come across a couple who had needed 3 trollies for all their suitcases. Sorry reader, we only needed one! Pathetic.