December 14, 2023 – At Sea – Atlantic Ocean – Warmer – Partly Cloudy – Mid 70s

Not a lot of sleep due to the choppy seas – you can see the nastiness of the ocean from our cabin window.

Despite the chop and the gray skies, it was warm enough to have breakfast out on the Sunset Veranda.  Today, it was pancakes and eggs – perfectly cooked.  Lots of good coffee and a Discover Magazine to read.  That’s as good as it gets.  

The open deck (Deck 5) is closed due to high winds – 25 kts or more.  So our time is spent in the Living Room.  The Sunset Veranda, because of its location, is not feeling the wind so we had lunch out there.

I had the grilled tuna wrap from the Patio, which is not as spicy as it used to be but still very good – there’s probably $20 worth of tuna on that sandwich.  It's got to be ordered "well done" or you have a sushi wrap.  The Salad Bar has finally added Ranch Dressing - a really good one - to its offerings.  It’s a good salad bar.   

Erik does a great job of pushing the talks at his 12 PM announcement (the only one of the day). 

My second talk, “Forensics and History: The Search for the Unknown Titanic Child”, drew a much larger crowd than yesterday’s session.  I would say that it is one of the bigger turnouts in the Cabaret Theater that I’ve seen over the years.  The theater was definitely more than 80 percent full and only a couple of people left before it was over.  I had some very nice feedback after this talk.  Both Eric and Astrid attended this talk – Eric stayed for the whole talk (he did the same yesterday).  It ran a little long at 58 minutes because I threw in my “Mitochondrial Eve” story in the beginning.

There was also a photographer at this talk and he took some wide shots and a couple of shots up close of me lecturing - I never found out why he was there and what the photos would be used for.  You can see him in the bottom two photos below.

We spent the afternoon in the Living Room and we both had Disaronno Sours – essentially an Amaretto Sour.  It’s a wonderful drink and one of our favorites. 

We passed on the show tonight (the band’s trumpet player was featured) and instead took in Country Night with Bob Style.  A nice playlist. 

The Captain was correct – the ship will be rocking and rolling until we dock tomorrow in San Juan.

The clocks move forward one hour tonight to put us on Atlantic Time (I actually didn’t know that until I got to breakfast the next day – I guess I didn’t read the program carefully enough).