WC103 – 04/04/2023 – Crossing the Arabian Sea

WARNING: This post contains art.

Noon Report:

  • Location:  N 17° 45.44′, E 066° 02.40′
  • Speed: 16.8 knots
  • Course: 258º
  • Weather: Partly Cloudy
  • Temperature: 26 C; 80 F
  • Wind: NW 5 knots; 6 mph
  • Sea: Calm

This is the first Sea Day of a 5 day run across the Arabian Sea, up the Gulf of Aden, and into the Red Sea on our way to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

So of course we celebrated by sleeping in. Actually our sleeping in was aided by a “set your clocks back 1/2 hour” notice (which brings us into line with most of the rest of the world. We are now 10 hours ahead of Boise.) We celebrated by exercising (something we let slide while on tours in Mumbai), then by heading up to deck 7 to Mamsen’s for waffles.

Life is GOOD!

Since we had internet again (and by the way, it’s screemin’!), we devoted the day to working on Blog posts for the past 4 days. We did take the time to take in the 9:30 “Human History of the Middle East”

And we skipped the 11:00 “Vasco Da Gama.” (We’ve heard way too much about him in the past couple of weeks.)

There was a 3:00 choir rehearsal, followed by a quartet rehearsal that lasted until 5:00.
(Randy got recruited to sing in a male quartet for the upcoming talent show. So there’s one more thing to occupy his copious amounts of free time.)

The 6:30 lecture was “The Lost World of the Crastrati” (with their more muscular frames they were very powerful singers – quite popular at the time – women would swoon).

Who wouldn’t want to witness that?

then it was dinner and BBB (9 of 26 – BRUTAL!)

Licking our wounds we retired to recharge our batteries and get ready for the morrow.

TTFN, R

Cheryl’s Factoids:

  • Saudi Arabia is the largest peninsula in the world on its own tectonic plate. For 100,000 years it has had prehistoric people trekking across it – standing stone statues from the 4th millennium BCE have been discovered. Mecca and Medina have always been a big trading hubs on the Spice and Silk Roads with products coming across the Arabian Sea from India.