At Sea, Thursday March 6 ~ Panama Canal Cruise
Weather Forecast: Sunny High 82 / Low 77
Sunrise 7:15 am / Sunset 6:58 pm
New Time Zone, one hour ahead
From the Navigator: Throughout the day, Coral Princess will continue to maintain a southwesterly course across the Caribbean Sea towards the island of Aruba. The Caribbean Sea is part of the Atlantic Ocean and lies between the Islands of the Greater and Lesser Antillies and the coasts of South and Central America. It covers an area of over 2,500,000 km2 and is considered one of the World’s most marine-rich bodies of water.
We spent this day mostly wandering around and eating.
Tom had a Veteran’s Gathering that started about 15 minutes before Pop Choir so he started there then joined me in choir.
We learned the difference between port and starboard. According to our guest lecturer, “starboard” is from the old practice of having a steering oar on one side of the ship with the right side thought to be chosen simply because most people are right handed.
The word starboard comes from Old English steorbord, literally meaning the side on which the ship is steered.
The captains didn’t want to damage their oars, so they usually docked with the left side facing the port – and that became the port side.
I saw an interesting brown bird. Tom said he thought that it was a frigate bird but that they couldn’t get wet. When I saw the bird dive into the water and come up with a fish, it disproved one or both of Tom’s thoughts.
This may have been what Tom was thinking of:
Frigate birds cannot plunge like pelicans, when wet they can’t take off without difficulty. If their wing span got fully wet it might drown them. Even with a 90 inch wing span water sopping adult frigate birds may have trouble from taking off in water. Surface dipping and fixed habitat feeding may explain species limitations in survival.
Eventually, we ended up in the library. Very comfortable chairs! There were headphone ports with some kind of music available, as well as footstools.
I settled down in my chair with my book and most likely dozed off for a bit. Next thing I knew, 2 (or more) women were talking behind me. I heard the entire life story of one of them, I think.
Then, I had a little headache and an ache at the back of my neck. We went to MUTS to see Mamma Mia! and my headache got a lot worse so we left.
By the time we got back to the cabin, the headache circled my whole head. I took 2 Tylenol (the only thing I’m allowed to take post-kidney cancer) and lay down a bit with a pillow over my head. Then 2 more.
About 7ish, I was feeling mostly better so I got up and we went to eat, followed by the movie Captain Phillips starring Tom Hanks.
We decided that one of the library talking-women was wearing a perfume I was allergic to. Tom will be more aware of potential scents in the future.
We had a small bit of rain…
At Sea, Wednesday March 5 ~ Panama Canal Cruise
Weather Forecast: Sunny High 81 / Low 77
Sunrise 6:32 am / Sunset 6:06 pm
From the Navigator: After passing the Santaren Channel, Coral Princess will alter to an easterly course as we enter the Old Bahama Channel, which lies between the Great Bahama Bank and the Northern coast of Cuba. We will continue to follow the north coast of Cuba before rounding Punta Maisi at the eastern end of the island. We will then pass through the Windward Passage which lies between Cuba and Haiti.
I woke up about 8:30 and took a shower in that tiny shower stall. A removable head shower would be better in tight quarters like that.
Tom was reading on the balcony. He’d brought me coffee, a croissant, banana and yogurt. Nice!
After a bit of me writing this, Tom napping, we went up to Horizon Court for real breakfast. We almost always sat looking out the windows over the bow. It was such a nice view.
We wandered around a bit and went to the Wheelhouse where I’d planned to join the Princess Pop Choir. Tom was going to wait but ended up knowing all the songs so he’s singing with us, too 🙂
We’ll have rehearsals every sea day and a final show the last night. James, the leader, said we’d get special pins to wear. Oooh!
Our songs, complete with choreography, will be:
Oh, What a Night
Waterloo
Isn’t She Lovely
It’s Not Unusual
We Are the Champions (might not be in the final show)
Sweet Caroline
We Will Rock You
We will be wearing black and white (where have I heard that before?!?) and our pins.
I have some black shorts with me but I didn’t think that they were performance-ready so when we were walking around later, I bought some black capris (and a *few* other things)
We talked to one of the young crew members, Hannah from Southhampton. We’d seen her at the show last night. Turns out she lives right up the street from James but they’d never met until this cruise.
After choir, we wandered around a bit, toward the atrium and into a couple shops (see black capris, above) , watched a bit of “Goofy Golf” and ran into some folks Tom knows (Jim and Rosie). Goofy Golf consists of hitting a golf ball down a stairway with a right turn and hill at the bottom. The ball was supposed to go into a plastic cup…eventually.
Back to the cabin for some reading and email, Then I decided to go out to a deck to read, instead.
We sat by the Lotus Pool for a while, then out on the deck. I think I rested my eyes in both places.
It was formal night but I didn’t feel like going to the bother so we just got a bit more dressy, but nowhere near formal.
We ate in the buffet, anyway, and the main meat offering was roast lamb. Yummy!
We were a bit early for the show, but there was a string trio playing in the Wheelhouse across the hall. We went in there – they were playing Mozart, Vivaldi, Ravel, Strauss but the thing that got to me was when they played Astor Piazolla’s Oblivion.
Several years ago, Alice and I were talking about skating and I mentioned that several of the skaters were using the music of Astor Piazolla. She’d never heard of him so I played some of his music over the phone for her. She immediately fell in love with his Oblivion and ended up buying the music for herself.
I couldn’t believe that this little group was playing this, another reminder of my Alice.
There are several versions of Oblivion on YouTube, none with string trios, so I liked this the best since it showed off a violinist:
We went into the show in the Princess Theater – it was completely full – so we sat in the 3rd row. It was wonderful. The show was called What a Swell Party and featured music of Cole Porter – how can you go wrong? I was just amazed at the talent the singers and dancers have.
After the show, we went out to see what was running on MUTS. It was the end of Jobs and we stayed for the rest of that and into the beginning of the next showing.
After getting a glass of ice water, we went back to the cabin. A reminder that we change our clocks forward tonight.
Lots of promising activities tomorrow, including choir practice.
And, on TV tonight – Great Expectations. I loved that book. The movie (2012 version), not so much.
I read about a paragraph of mine (Pigeonwings) before I fell asleep.
