Trevor & Jonathans Cruise & Trip to the Far East and Australia 2016

Day 13 - Sunday May 22nd 2016 - Cruising the Gulf of Aden

So you can tell that we are getting into the rhythm of this cruising lark. Slowly we are waking up later and later and later as the sea days roll on.

Our morning ritual changed this morning as we were both over fed, over stuffed and still suffering from all the food that we had eaten at Chops Grilel the night before. Instead of heading for the Windjammer for breakfast this morning we went to the bar at the Solarium to have a fruit and veg protein shake for breakfast.

Now we don’t begrudge paying for anything in life but we don’t like being made mugs of and the cost of this shake was doing just that. So for half a piece of carrot, a couple of wedges of cucumber, a spoonful of protein powder and some soya milk we paid a total of $24 for both of us, absolute

day light robbery. We were typically British though and just smiled and walked away with our drinks (they did taste good) and scuttled away to a different seating area so that we could moan about it.

After our tres expensive shake and a Starbucks we headed off to the seating area located around the red hanging sculpture and adjacent to Vintages and Jamie’s Italian restaurant to write the blog up ( this is becoming our morning routine as leaving to the afternoon/evening means that it just does not get done and we end up days behind). It gets it out of the way and the afternoons are always busier with gym and getting ready etc.

This is the first boat we have been on where they action time changes in the day so one minute it was 11 o’clock in the morning and then it was lunchtime, it really does mess with the day and it’s much better when they change time zones in the middle of the night when everyone is asleep. We are now on Dubai time though so no more changes until we get to Vietnam.

As the morning had been artificially speeded up we had to head up to deck fifteen as Jonathan had an appointment with ifly, the on board skydiving simulator.

Now he had experience of the fly when he did it when we travelled on Anthem of the Seas but he was still really looking forward to it as it is a unique experience.

Whilst Trevor went up to the observation deck to watch me fly I sat through a safety video, learnt the necessary hand signals as you can’t hear a thing in the wind tunnel itself and then complete with my jumpsuit, helmet, earplugs and glasses headed up the spiral staircase to the entrance to the wind turbine tunnel.

I was in a group of about ten people of all different ages from 10 to 70 and I was second in the tube. The force once you enter the tube is incredible, it really can take your breath away and you can feel all the skin on your face invert around your skull, pushing against it and flapping in the high force of the turbine. The perfect position for skydiving is to create an arch with your body and keep your head high up and your legs high. It’s quite hard to do as the force of the upwind naturally makes you want to look down but the moment you do this you go downward to the floor of the simulator and effectively stop flying. You get sixty seconds in the tube and it is the equivalent time it would take you to freefall 12000 feet from a plane. My turn over, you sit and watch the rest of your group with varying degrees of success, one of the guys in his early twenties had a panic attack in the tube and said he could not breathe. They let him back in at the end of the group and he did much better but I think he felt a bit less macho as his girlfriend was excellent at it.

As sea days go there was nothing remarkable about today at all, the only thing that was slightly strange was that Trevor and I did not spend much of it together.

Jonathan headed for deck fifteen and sunbathed for a few hours after a very light lunch whilst Trev sat and continued to sort out the web page and the photographs out of the high humidity and shade. Two hours passed by really quickly.

The weather outside was constant haze, really humid with high temperatures but there was a breeze up on the deck. Needless to say though it was seriously warm and Trevor and I both suffered leakage (where you sweat so much form the humidity that your t-shirt looks all horrible wet and well just yuk!).

In our separation from each other Trevor had taken himself off to the gym and when I returned to the cabin to get ready to go there myself Trev was back and in pain. He had gone to the gym with the best of intentions, an hours work out was his plan but after twenty minutes or so his legs just packed in and where not having any of it so he hobbled back to the cabin with muscle pain in his claves saying that his legs felt like concrete. (Jonathan knew this feeling well from all his marathon training).

Leaving Trev to nurse his legs Jonathan went off to the gym and ran eight miles on the treadmill. It really is boring running on treadmills. The gym is up on deck 16 as is surrounded by floor to ceiling windows that look over the bow of the ship. The disadvantage of this is that it’s a bit like running in a greenhouse and can get incredibly hot especially when running a distance at a good speed like he was. Luckily someone asked for the blinds to be pulled down about half way through my session and it really made a difference.

Back in the room and did Trevor’s washing for him, just the basics of pants and socks and t-shirts. Once again the balcony chairs came into their own and acted like a makeshift airer for drying them out.

It was now time for the evening rituals to begin and we headed off to the Schooner bar for our pre dinner drink before beading to Chic for dinner. Thankfully the service was also better this time than on our last visit and we got out of the restaurant with enough time to get to the theatre at 21:00.

The show tonight was rat pack swing with an English singer and the ovation of the seas orchestra. It was a good show, not the best with the highlight being the pure musicianship of the band being the highlight. There was nothing wrong with the singer at all, it was just that you could not really hear him for the first three numbers or so. It took a brave member of the audience to shout out that you could not hear the singer to change this and then it did make a difference.

Afterwards, we bumped into Michael and Martin just outside the theatre and for a change we headed off to the Schooner bar for a post-show drink and gossip. Maybe the music was too loud or maybe the hours in the sun had wiped us out but it was an early night for us tonight. Now when I say early it was still midnight but we chilled out in the room for a bit just reading and relaxing in silence before hitting the switch.

Another sea day over with three more to go and the the craziness of the real travelling kicks in for a bit. Better get our rest whilst we can get it.