November 20 - At sea

It's a beautiful morning  here on the Ovation. We're north of the island of Hispaniola moving at 17 knots with ESE winds of 12.4 mph and the temperature is 82°.  As we approach Puerto Rico from  the  northwest we'll be sailing in some of the deepest waters of the Atlantic known as the Puerto Rico Trench.  At its deepest point the  trench is nearly 27,500 feet deep!  It exists because it's at the boundary of two plates, the Caribbean which is moving east and the North American which is moving west. NASA has found that the area beneath this trench is so dense that it actually has a gravitational pull on the ocean which dips a little here. I wonder how they measure that.

Now that you've had a geology lesson for the day I'll make my report.  Yesterday we began this cruise's trivia contest.  My new team is named Abandon Ship and we did okay yesterday.  We have two PhDs in English on the team so naturally not a single question was asked about anything to do with literature.  Nonetheless they do seem to play for fun, not as if it's a bloodsport.

Yesterday I went to the lecture about rum.  The lecturer (one of my teammates) is entertaining but there were some inaccuracies.  When she spoke about  the Jamestown colonists she talked about them drinking beer despite there being "pristine lakes and streams" nearby. What can I say, she's from southern California and probably has never been to Jamestown.  The lecture ended with all of us having a toast with a jigger of rum. It made me remember why I stopped drinking rum a long time ago.

Yesterday there was a British Pub night before dinner.  The band is great and lots of feet were tapping. One brave couple got up and danced and they were very good. I suspect they've taken dance classes.  The assistant cruise director was making a drink called a Pimm's Cup which is evidently popular in the UK in the summer. He made one for me and I thought it tasted lovely.  I have no idea what was in it and I haven't googled it yet.  After the show I had dinner at the Cruise Director's table.  He was very excited because it was the first time they have been able to have hosted tables since everything shut down last year. It was a nice evening, but I think conversation is always a little stilted at those tables.  Afterwards I came back to my cabin because the show was the Latin Quarter which I saw on the last leg.

I guess that's it for now.  I wish I had some exciting photos to post, but the sea looks pretty much the same every day.