Noon Report:

• Location: N 51° 29.15′, W 127° 51.30′
• Speed: 17 knots
• Course: 351º
• Weather: Patchy Clouds
• Temperature: 15º C; 59º F
• Wind: WNW 3 knots; 3.5 mph
• Sea: Calm

Today is a ‘Sea Day’ – Which means that we don’t dock anywhere. Instead…

we retire to the Explorer’s Lounge for Mamsen’s waffles, and end up spending the rest of the morning sitting, reading, watching the passing islands, jumping up occasionally when someone shouts “WHALE”, and working on the BLOG.

We had scheduled the 9:30 lecture but during breakfast we came to our senses. We did, however run a load of laundry. After 5 days in Beaverton we were ready to refresh our wardrobe.

About noon we pulled up stakes and dropped down to the theatre for Team Trivia. We were joined by Bob and Pam from Tulsa who brought their knowledge of contemporary culture and metric conversions to today’s topic – ships and seafaring. We ended up scoring 14 of 15.

Then it was off to lunch. It’s interesting to me that if it’s just the two of us we eat, then move on with our day. But with the four of us lunch is a more leisurely affair with a bit of lingering and no particular need to leave the table – which is handy when a northern humpback whale happens to ‘blow’ by.

Eventually we did, though, leave and return to the stateroom where Cheryl napped and I read until 2:30 when I attended the Q&A with the Captain, Chief Engineer, Hotel Manager and Head Chef. They are all very experienced and there was a lot of good humor and ribbing of each other (egged on by the Cruise Director who was playing ‘pass the mic’). They answered questions for the better part of an hour.

One of the things they talked about was the delay in Vancouver harbor last evening. It seems that because of the way we dock there we have to pull away from the dock before we can offload trash to a tender craft – a process that takes a couple of hours. So much for the ‘laundry room rumor mill’.

Then it was my nap time.

The next event was the Ketchikan Port Talk. They are offering about 2 dozen excursions at this port but we agree that we are pleased with the one we chose.

We met Billie in the Explorer’s Lounge at 6:00 for a pre-prandial cocktail (Steve was feeling the effects of too much partying) – but the real reason was to listen to the resident guitarist (King). We heard him a bit yesterday evening and were really impressed.

Dinner this evening was ‘A Taste of America’ – some interesting offerings. I had a shrimp poke bowl and a cup of hot and sour soup.

After dinner we returned to our stateroom and reset our clocks back an hour – putting us on Alaska time.

One additional note from yesterday. After last night’s dinner we wandered out to the terrace to check out the receding lights of Vancouver. They were a bit far away to make a good photo, but while we were there we looked down. A Viking Ocean cruise ship has a sort of a ‘fan tail’. It’s a flat area at water level sticking out behind the ship.

At a previous Q&A the captain described it’s purpose as allowing us to ‘surf the wake’. That didn’t make much sense until we looked down last night:

So that’s it for Day 2. Tomorrow is Ketchikan. We should get a good opportunity to test our rain gear.

Nite all, R.