Sea days sailing towards Puerto Caldera, Costa Rica

Yesterday Paul and I went to the infirmary and we met the new crew and passenger doctors, and the nurses.  They seemed to be a nice team.  One of the nurses on board was on when we were last here, 3 months ago, so it was nice to see a familiar face.  The doctors are a husband and wife team from South Africa.  The irony of the whole thing is that they won’t be able to get off the ship at the same time if they want to go out for the day - there has to be at least 1 doctor on board at all times.

Later on during the day we went to a lecture about the continental plates, earthquakes and volcanoes.  It could have been a good lecture but unfortunately the chap was ‘all over the place’ with what he was talking about, not really in logical sequence and kept repeating himself too much.  I think he had too much information to deliver in the time he had allocated.  If I had been a student of his at a university lecture – I would have fallen asleep!  The auditorium was packed and the speaker seemed to have won the hearts of some of his audience.  It will be interesting to see what the outcome of his next lectures will be.

Today the King Neptune ceremony was cancelled due to rain.  When the ship crosses the equator, any staff member who has never been across the equator gets to see King Neptune and their fate is decided by his consorts.  The outside swimming pool on the aft deck tends to be used for the ceremony but ideally the ceremony could have still been held if the midships lido pool was used as it has a roof cover.  Oh well…  The ceremony has been postponed until tomorrow so hopefully the tropical downpour will have stopped.

Nothing exciting has been happening today.  I decided not to attend any of the lectures even though they sounded interesting.  I have been trying to look for a vacuum bag for a mattress but as yet nothing.  There are jumbo vacuum bags for clothes and linen but not mattresses.  Oh well.

Paul had someone to fix a few lights in the cabin and once done, a chap came with angle grinder to get rid of the remainders of brackets on a built-in cabinet that Paul is modifying in a lovely display shelf which has been ‘hiding’ away for many years behind cabinet doors and a fold up table – which are now gone.  The smoke from the hot metal set the alarms off which in turn had someone ringing Paul to alert him (about something he already knew about!).  Now the room smells of hot metal.  Bits of wood are on standby to be glued or nailed into place to finish the display cabinet off – and hiding the remaining bits of brackets.

Rack of lamb for dinner for me, fish for Paul whilst watching a good dose of “Foyle’s War”.  The clocks go back 1 hour tonight so that means and extra hour’s kip in the morning  J (How sad is that – sleeping my life away!)

You can see photographs of the Maasdam which I took last year, although I do update the album if I see something new!  Here is the link to my album on facebook:  MS Maasdam