Nov 11.2009 - Last Day At Sea

DKP : Five straight days of waking up to calm seas and sunshine with Bermuda as the dot at the bottom of the explantion point... then THIS. Hurricane Ida!

You see, Sandy and I don't end up watching the news very much when we sail. We don't end up watching anything other than the navigational map actually. We're lucky if we catch the end of the daily movie on TNT while we shower and dress for dinner at 8:15, which is a relative time especially when the end of the movie is good :-), much to the chagrin of my family and a certain server and Maitre'd, who reminds us nightly that dinner is not at 8:45 - whatever!! You'd think he'd given up by now.

Anyway, as if the Bermuda Triangle wasn't cause for enough concern, we seem to be sailing straight through the outerbands of this storm with winds clocked at 110 MPH at her center - yikes! I've NEVER had the experience of being a pinball before in the slim hallways leading to our cabin. I consider it big fun to be bounced around a bit on a ship, but this is a bit different. The winds are so high, the Captain has ordered no deck access. The seas are so rough that if you stay down below, out of sight of the horizon line for too long, even the most stable of inner ears will give into sea sickness.

The staff and crew are busy trying to prevent breakage as the ship pitches and rolls and slides in what seems to be a skidding motion - stabilizers, what stabilizers?? Sometimes they can't use them if we aren't going fast enough, but in this case I think there are engaged... would hate to see what would happen if they weren't.

Since Ping Pong is out as an afternoon option, it's actually a perfect day for finishing up some computer work and packing, a daunting task after 28 days of "spreading out" in our 300 sq ft living space. It proves to be even more daunting when I realize that I have spend the day just trying to stay upright and all those little muscles that allow us to do that are downright exhausted and the packing has just begun.

Luckily for us, magnets, postcards and a few more clothes were the main items to add to our already stuffed bags. Thank goodness Ryan Air is no longer in the picture or we'd be another $1000 euro in fines just for the magnets alone. So 3 bags to go by 10pm when they take them from the hallway. You can just hear the Cruise Director with his obligatory cruise ship joke about the guy who forgot to leave out a change of clothes for the morning - whaa whaa whaa.

So it's off to one last dinner with the family, one last bottle of wine, one last song from the DR staff and the singing Maitre'd and one last chance to hang with our friends down in the underbelly of the ship. But we're not ready to leave... we will, but we don't want to. These past 28 days has seemed like a warm up, we were just finding our groove...

With all that we've discovered it just opens up a world of possibilities of even more to learn and experience. The Carnival Dream has been a great host to these experiences and we truly appreciate all of the special access and attention that has been given to us on behalf of my father's association with the cruise line. We don't take any of it for granted.

Tonight around 3am we sail into the harbor, past the Statue of Liberty. An obnoxious time for those who value sleep, fortuntately we are not those tonight... we'll be soaking every last minute out of the next 48 hrs... stay tuned.