What a joy to be back at sea. We continue to track almost due south, the equator some 500nm ahead, Moorea about 1,790. We’re making 16 knots from Honolulu and have sailed for 36 hours.
A leisurely morning is followed by a double dose of trivia, general knowledge, then science. We don’t do these for the prize, we aim to learn, and for progressive trivia you sometimes get hints. We score 14/20 and a woeful 7/20 for the science quiz, no, we don’t know how many elements there are or the components of a cell.
We then walk to the back of the ship. So many people lying in the sun, just soaking up the UV.
We change things up today and head to the Oceanview Cafe, the buffet. Our focus is pizza for lunch. We sit and take in the view from the stern, the wash of the propellers, or Azipods, as they’re called on Edge. Rather than a conventional shaft and rudder, Edge’s two Azipod units hang the electric drive motor itself in a pod outside the hull, the whole thing able to rotate a full 360 degrees. Power comes from the ship’s diesel generators, fed electrically to the pods rather than through a mechanical shaft, and because the pod steers as well as drives, there’s no separate rudder needed at all. It also means the propeller pulls the ship through the water rather than pushing it, which is a big part of why these ships can turn and stop so much more sharply than older designs, useful when you’re manoeuvring in and out of ports like Vancouver or Honolulu.
We then grab some pizza and a few snacks and head back to our room before heading up to the Retreat for some trivia. Wow, we do really well, scoring 20 out of 21 and think we might win, but alas a team scores perfectly. We still win a life-changing prize though, a Celebrity hat and coin purse. We enjoy the comfort of the lounge for a while before heading to the Club for more trivia, round 2 of 10 of the progressive trivia. Round one scores are up and we’re in the top four. Today’s quiz is hard, we score only 10 out of 20. Who knew ants live in a formicarium?
We stay on for a talk by Dr Gloria Auchey on the brain and why we do the things we do, our behaviours and so on, a scientific look at what many personality tests try to determine. It’s fun. Gloria notices Mardi pointing at me when she describes a behaviour, and sadly we’re in the front, we didn’t move after trivia, so Gloria walks over and starts asking me questions about being so nice and caring, but warns me not to be taken advantage of. It’s fun but a bit awkward, chatting to her in front of everyone. She does say to Mardi he’s a keeper, because he’s so loyal and caring. The inquisition is over as she moves on to the next person. It’s a great talk and reinforced a lot of what I’ve learnt over the years as a leader.
We then plan a dinner time we think might be a bit quieter, since starting the second leg of our cruise, the first for many of our fellow passengers, we’ve found Luminae particularly busy. All the new Retreat guests are enjoying the gourmet cuisine, so we’ve missed out on our usual window seats. So tonight we try to be a little strategic about the timing, but alas it’s busy again. We still enjoy some nice salad, beef, and salmon, although Mardi found the salmon a little dry. We chat to the staff about how busy it is. They say it’ll quieten down as we get further into the cruise, as people venture out more.
After dinner we have a quiet night in, enjoying a Baileys and milk before bed.
