January 3rd, 2023

We had a very calm smooth sea day. A few swells but it was more like cruising in a lake than the Pacific Ocean.

Our calm day at sea

We did a ship’s behind the scenes tour in the morning and that was fun. We had not done one before. They took us down into the galley where all the food is prepared and told us about all the rules for food and it is amazing how much we waste every day. Most of the food, including the bones, gets ground up and released into the ocean as fish food. There are certain areas that is not allowed like in Antartica and then they have to hire ships to come and get the waste.

We got to see the storage areas and the multiple freezers and refrigerators that store all the food. They have one main corridor running the length of the ship which they call I-95. The general manager, who gave the tour, Ronald had no idea what I-95 was since he is from Norway. All the traffic below the decks happens on this corridor. Ronald told lots of stories about trying to acquire supplies and then all the different rules, depending on what country you are in, for getting the supplies on board. The stories were entertaining for us but I am sure very frustrating when you are trying to meet a deadline.

We went into a control room that had tons of cameras, different monitors that measure lots of different things and 1 person was stationed in there watching it all. From there we went down another level, below sea level and saw the laundry facilities. We all were amazed at the big machine that you need 2 people to feed a sheet into and it drys and irons the sheet and then folds it into a nice square. Not sure what the back-up plan is if the machine goes down.

The tour took about an hour and then I was off to Mah Jongg and Kathy to the gym

I was feeling guilty for getting a diet Sprite or 2 for the evening in the cabin and then I saw the supply downstairs and figured they had enough.

This is the cool sheet machine. The little folded squares of sheets come out on the bottom and then they get stacked up top.

We spent the afternoon on the balcony reading. The weather is getting cooler as we head north. We are on our way to Cabo and it looks like the high in Cabo will be 70. It will be nice to have a little cooler weather before we get into the warm summer weather of New Zealand and Australia.

We had dinner with some new friends in the dining room and then back to the cabin to watch some stuff on the iPad that Kathy downloaded. We gained another hour last night so we are now 2 hours behind Eastern time. We still have 2 more days at sea before Cabo on Saturday.