Sat 4 Feb 2017: all at sea

All at sea. Sailing, sailing.

Adelie penguin video in the morning. Deb goes. I read.

Attenborough video on Antarctica in the morning. Deb goes.

I go through our photos. Just looking. It takes me quite a while to get the Mac to show them in date order... It wants to group them by "last seven days", "last 30 days", "older". Dratted computers that want to think for me.

The photos remind me where we were at the start of this trip...

It's interesting: My mind is full of ice and snow, floes, bergs and snow-covered islands. There are photos of bush & grass ! Seems such a long time ago.

After lunch, the final of Amundsen vs Scott. Phew! Deb goes, to see how it ends. (No real surprise.) And to get the popcorn. She brings back some popcorn for me. (I did ask:-)

I walk on the poop deck. For not too long -- it's still cold. I do laps -- holding on to the rails. By the final laps I'm confident enough to sometimes walk without holding on. It's not rough -- but there's a lot of swaying, side to side.

I see lots of sea. And one brown bird. (Skua?) An iceberg directly ahead -- which disappears back into the mist. Another iceberg off to one side. Low level excitement. I enjoy just being out on deck -- in all the weather. But I don't stay long.

Another lecture: Samuel on his fifteen months at the French Antarctic base (Dumont D'Urville). Deb is all lectured out and sleeps. Later, we hear that it was great: insights into Samuel, others, how they reacted to isolation etc. Ah well.

Dinner.

At lunch Griff was carrying Darwin's Origin of the Species. He seemed to think that it was good as a soporific. So at dinner I lend him my Terminator book. Say he can keep it till lunch tomorrow. (He'd better return it -- I  alternate philosophy with fantasy, I need something more than sword & sorcery.)

Sharon likes her meat well done, it's red rare. (Hers was cooked well done -- but delivered to someone else.) She sends the rare meat back. And waits... and waits. It takes a while to cook or re-cook one meal... We're all finished our main course when her well done meat arrives. But, she says, it was worth the wait.

Dessert is banana in blini. Deb almost gets dessert, it's taken back and passed to someone else. Eh?! Then our dessert arrives, Deb's and mine...

Round the edge of the plate is written, in chocolate icing, "40 years + 44 days" ! Yes, it's our just-missed-it anniversary :--)  With the original trip dates we would have been on board for our 40th. It is only our table that knows exactly what is happening. Deb is suitably embarrassed but only in front of a select audience. All very nice :-)

Now back to reading. And occasionally looking outside. At ... the sea.

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