Lost at Sea - II

Saturday, 11 October – Between Valparaiso and Robinson Crusoe Island (S33 07 W74 33 at 1600 GMT)

Sail out at 11 pm last night was beautiful. Apparently it is the usual spring weather along the mid-Chilean coast for the clouds to dissipate at night. The gibbous moon was directly overhead as the captain eased the ship away from the dock and had to do almost a J-turn to avoid the adjacent dock, a seafront restaurant with a number of small water taxi boats (with names like Elwood and Plenty plus one with a swan head that seemed to be carrying Navy officers to the military ship I photographed during our arrival), and a docked container ship plus an anchored floating drydock. Like in Lisbon as mentioned earlier, Valparaiso is built on a hillside. The lights of the city were spectacular as we finally headed out to sea. I was the only observer on deck. The captain saw me and waved with a big smile. He stopped me on deck this morning to give me a weather report. This is a great honor or maybe a result of his limited English. I prefer to believe it’s the former. On a similar note, Heinz, the Food and Beverage Manager, a very tall Austrian has been calling me, “Mr. Howard”. This has been taken up by one or two of the assistant waiters who invariably get reprimanded by the head waiters who know my name correctly. The poor underlings are having to deal now with a long time guest who seems to have two persona.

Note above the photo detail on the Navy ship as we came into Valparaiso yesterday. This is the Chilean Navy vessel that the swan boat was taking officers to. The big ship sailed out during the day. I presume without the clam eating stowaway, and the swan boat went back to civilian duties.

Oddly enough and most surprisingly, we did have to set the clocks AHEAD one hour as we sailed due west. We have been holding 264 degrees at a leisurely 12.1 knots for the last 13 hours and will do so until arriving at the anchorage at RC Island tomorrow morning at 8 am. That will be the most southerly point on the cruise from LA to Papeete which is at only 6 degrees south latitude. The sky is now clear, but the temperature is only 60 degrees or so. Nice in the sheltered pool area however but nobody is in the pool. We should be out of the 58 degree Humboldt Current after our stop tomorrow. The sea is virtually flat. There is no noticeable movement of the ship, usually the case during tropical crossings in this part of the world. At least none of the new guests (at least new elderly women guests) are doing the exaggerated penguin imitation upon sailing, usually followed by my mumbling (under by breath of course), “It’s a xxxx’ing ship for heaven’s sake.” I heard this morning, however, that the intriguingly named, Prince Albert II, the expedition ship run by Silversea had to evacuate the passengers and most of the crew in Mexico yesterday and fly them south so that the ship could sail out to sea to avoid the hurricane. I continue to advise people not to buy those cheap Caribbean and “Mexican Riviera” cruise itineraries that are offered in the Fall. There are hurricanes there! Of course, we passed through the area at the beginning of the cruise, but we passed through quickly.

The cognitive dissonance inducing time change in the wrong direction was necessitated by Chile going onto Summer Time tonight. Robinson Crusoe Island is part of Chile and observes the same time as on the mainland. While this solves the mystery, we now have to make up 7 hours (from -3 GMT here to -10 GMT) before arriving in French Polynesia. My inside sources advise me that will entail moving the clock back one hour for 7 out of 9 days starting Monday evening. Bet there’ll be lots of folks for the 6:30 am early bird coffee service, although room service is in fact available 24/7. (You can get a steak or even spring rolls any time if that’s your need.)

The new folks who embarked yesterday include quite a few old faces (in more ways than one), some of whom are nice to see again. An additional enrichment lecturer appeared to share his knowledge about these South Sea island calls. He recognized me from earlier cruises and remembered my prior shipboard life as a fellow lecturer. Nice to see him. He spent all summer on this ship in Alaska and came back after leaving in LA the day I got on. I didn’t go to his talk this morning, but the report I got was that he started his lecture by saying he didn’t know much about these islands and had never been there. I guess they owed him a warm weather cruise. Nice guy, though.

Had dinner last night with a lovely English couple in my age group. They have a business of business risk management training. Tomorrow I will dine with a delightful retired California supreme court judge and journalist wife (hope they don’t read the word “delightful”), and Selvaggia is planning a dinner for the two of us in the La Terraza Italian restaurant later this week. You may recall that she is the Cruise Consultant onboard. We’ve sailed a number of times on the same cruises, and I had dinner with her and Allesandra, the International Hostess, on the first cruise. The Hotel Director also said he wants to have a private dinner with me. May have something to do with the e-mail I copied him regarding the now disembarked prior Tour Desk Manager. (I asked the new tour guy if he heard about the old one. He just held his head and laughed. He then said something about an e-mail copy that is circulating in the officers’ bar. I said, “Oh really. Tell me more.”)

About to go up on deck now that it is clement outside and read, “Mathematics of the Incas: Code of the Quipu.” Quipu’s (or is it quipa?) were the knotted colored twine that was used for more than a century to convey messages to the outlying districts from the central Inca command and control center in Cusco. I am essentially ok now from the intense but brief cold, but I will continue the Cephalexin caplets and neat single malt treatments until the prescription and bottle respectively are gone.