Day 28 - Fri - 10/24/2025 - At Sea to FLL - Day 6

 Today was our next to last day at sea and the daily schedule was quite similar to the prior sea days except that not many events were scheduled in the morning due to a muster drill that was optional for passengers but we were encouraged to participate for reasons I'll describe below.

After our morning bible study and breakfast the drill was scheduled for 10am.  When the general emergency alarm was sounded, we were to report to our muster stations and await further instructions.  Our muster station was D. (Explorer's Lounge).  By the time I got there after receiving the announcement while walking the outside deck, it was pretty crowded and there were no remaining seats in the lounge.  So Angela and I found seats in the outside hallway.  The reason for our needing to stay there became apparent as they wanted the crew to practice crowd control, demonstrate how to put on life jackets and demonstrate how to walk slowly to the outside "crocodile style" which was humorous to watch.  The entire drill took around a half an hour.

After a light lunch, Jacob Martin gave his last enrichment talk on American Whaling and how it came about and evently ended.  He's a really good lecturer.  Later in the day I encountered him on deck and we had a great chat.  Unfortunately the Deal or No Deal Game show was scheduled at the same time, so I missed it. The rest of the day was free for me so I wrote and walked deck 7.

I had been standing at the rail on deck 7 with Doug for an hour.  Doug is a participant in our interdenominational Bible study, but we had never chatted extensively but this day was different.  Our conversation ran the gamut about the Bible study, our backgrounds, church, flying fish, the cruise, and much more.  As we gazed on the nearly flat deep blue ocean, from time to time a flying fish would launch and skim across the waves.  Sometimes it would only be a few feet, but usually, they would sail 20 or 30 yards. Occasionally, a group of 10 or more would launch and fly out to escape the path of the large cruise ship and its wake.  

Eventually Doug excused himself to go find his wife and I was left alone at the rail, pondering my thoughts and watching for more flying fish.  One of those thoughts went back to our first transatlantic cruise, when on the Prinsendam, I would stand at the rail for hours watching flying fish for the first time.  We've since done a number of transatlantic cruises but I never spent as much time at the rail as I did today.  But the experience never has gotten old and brought the same joy of seeing the little fish take off and fly above the rolling sea.

I decided to continue my walk around the deck and walked a few feet forward when a couple stopped me and asked, "Have you seen any flying fish?"  I said, "Yes, lots of them.  The key is to just stand here at the rail and scan the water.  Your eye will catch the movement and then you can focus on following their flight."  Just then a fish took off and I pointed it out to them and they saw their first flying fish.  They thanked me for the tips, and I continued my walk forward towards the stairs leading to Deck 8.  As I approached the stairs, a large splash about 100 yards out from the ship caught my eye.  My mind translated that vision into 'that's pretty large for a flying fish.' It then recomputed that it was a dolphin, no a pod of dolphins.  Two of them were heading for the ship, and I instinctively pulled out my iPhone to take some pictures.  I've fortunately had lots of practice photographing wildlife, so I was able to get a few pictures of the dolphins as they approached the ship and attempted to swim in the pressure wave of the water displaced by the ship's hull as it knifed through the water at around 21mph or 18.5 knots.  When they were near the ship, I could see their grey shapes just under the surface of the water as they matched the ship's hull speed.

And in a flash, they let the ship continue on its way as they allowed the ship to pass. My last view of the dolphins was the sight of one of them that leaped about 5 feet in the air before completing its arc and smoothly diving back into the ocean.  The couple that I had helped earlier frantically waved at me to make sure I had seen the dolphins.  I gave them an affirmative wave back, and like nothing had ever happened I continued on my walk around the cruise ship.  Days like this are infrequent, but my motto is "just show up!"  If one doesn't show up, no surprises can happen.

We enjoyed a dinner in a specialty popup restaurant called Planks.  The cuisine is southern BBQ. We found that it was best to have me order the 3 course meal and Angela just ordered the salad starter and a decadent chocolate dessert.  We then split the entree which was two BBQ'd ribs and some pulled BBQ chicken, beans, coleslaw, fries, and Mac & cheese ( which I don't care for).  Everything was very yummy!

The cast performed the stage show, Sweet Soul Music which is quite good.  Afterwards we went to the Marriage game show in the Explorer's Lounge (way too small of a venue) before returning to the room to watch & listen to game 1 of the World Series.  Toronto won decisively 11-4 over LA.

Tomorrow is our final sea day on this month long voyage.