Finsatsea: 11/02 and 11/03 - Not so lazy sea days

Where does the time go? We have our two sea days before arriving in Cape Verde. I tried the gym on Saturday morning. It’s actually very nice with several treadmills, ellipticals, and bikes as well as some weight machines and free weights. The treadmills are actually much nicer than the ones at my gym in Newport News.

After breakfast at the Colonnade we went to Seabourn Square and Al checked e-mails and I worked on my blog. A little about Seabourn Square. It is a large space at the aft of the ship which is the center of activity. It’s here that Guest Services have desks as well as Destination Services(shore excursions), and the Future Cruise Specialist. Computers are available for the internet. We use our own but some folks don’t bring one with them. There’s also a coffee bar where you can get all manner of coffee drinks including cappuccinos, lattes and frappes. There’s also a selection of pastries, sandwiches and several types of ice cream. It’s a little like an International Café on Princess except that there’s no extra charge for anything you order.

At noon we met with our trivia team for game three of this round. Here on Seabourn they do a progressive trivia during which you accumulate points for five games. At that point the winning team will be declared. Since we have 10 sea days we’ll start a new cycle with out 6^th sea day. I’m happy to report that at the moment our team, the Nitwits, is leading. That can change from day to day though.

After lunch we chilled out at the pool waiting for one of the highlights of the sea days – the Crew Tug of War. The various departments form teams and under the Captain’s direction stage tug-of-war matches by the pool. Our cabin stewardess Natalie was on the housekeeping team, the Dustbusters. It was fun to watch and cheer the various groups on. The Bar Team won which seemed to be a hit with a lot of the passengers. I wonder why. There is an awful lot of champagne, wine and assorted libations being consumed on this ship.

The Tug of War

Another view of the main pool area

On Saturday evening we ate at the alternative restaurant, Restaurant 2 (creative name – LOL). It’s a small place which serves a sort of tasting menu of small plates. I guess you could even call them little tapas. The combinations and tastes were very creative. I know I would never have thought of some of them. It was enjoyable and different.

This morning, Sunday, we awaited the solar eclipse. Unfortunately there are quite a few clouds around. A man from Australia showed us how to use our binoculars and a piece of paper to see the sun without hurting our eyes. Fortunately we did get a couple of glimpses as the eclipse reached it’s maximum coverage for us. It turns out we’re a little too far south to see the totality. We had about 75% coverage. Tonight we’re hoping that the skies clear off because there’s a new moon and with no clouds we should see lots of stars.

At noon it was time for trivia again. Our team maintained its lead! We have one more round on Tuesday and we can keep our position we’ll win. Who knows, the prize might be a luggage tag or a bookmark! After trivia and lunch we played a couple of games of Scrabble and now we found that we could once again get on the internet. It’s time to catch up on e-mails and such.

Aside from an occasional bird, a few dolphins yesterday afternoon and some flying fish skimming along the water this morning, the only other sign of life we've seen was this oil rig we passed sometime yesterday. It was so far off it looked like a distant blur. i was amazed Al got this good a photo of it.