Noon Report:

• Location:  N 14° 21.40′, E 052° 43.40′
• Speed: 18 knots
• Course: 253º
• Weather: Partly Cloudy
• Temperature: 27 C; 81 F
• Wind: ESE 7 knots; 9 mph
• Sea: Calm

We woke up this morning to a newly fortified ship for sailing thru this historically “iffy” stretch of water.
While I won’t go into specifics, I will say that there are defensive measures that we can see, measures that we know about but can’t see, and measures that we don’t know about.
Honestly I feel significantly protected (overprotected?) but better safe…

The 9:30 lecture this morning was a bit unusual.
Viking Resident Historians come on board to present a series of lectures about topics pertinent to the part of the world we’re sailing thru. They also conduct one or more ‘forums’ – talks that are more interactive – allowing people to add comments or raise specific questions.

So today’s forum was about “The Meaning of Life.”
He started with a pre-test – a survey designed to help us understand what we feel the meaning of life is, and/or what questions we have about the meaning of life. It was interesting, but not particularly enlightening. We both came away thinking “Yep. That’s me.”
The discussion was interesting, though. He presented a series of (admittedly western) views drawn from the Greek Philosophers and invited us to identify which school (or schools) we most resonated with.

That was so heavy that I was glad to move to a quartet rehearsal. Singing always helps to blow off steam.

Lunch today was “Sandwich Day.”

It was all tasty but the egg with caramelized onion and Swiss cheese was AMAZING!

While we were on the terrace we took a few minutes to have our picture taken as we entered the Gulf of Aden – named for our grandson; Renner Aden Hunt.

After lunch we hosted a meeting of the participants in the Petra excursion. It was a lively meeting and we made some good decisions.

That meeting lasted so long that we missed the 2:00 Music Appreciation session with Bruce – this one looking at the story-telling power of music.

At 4:30 we were back in the Theatre for the talk “Nautical Knowledge – What the Captain Learned in College.”

The speaker was Robin Petch – our Resident Naturalist, himself a qualified small boat captain. It was pretty cool to learn about things that a captain needs to know and have control over.

Back in the stateroom we were hanging out (reading / blogging) when we got a text from Pat and Denny (some of our BBB team members). Denny was saving a 4 person table down on the pool deck and wanted to know if we wanted to join them for the big presentation: Lobster Night (and “dancing under the stars”).

So we threw on our glad rags, promised each other we would watch the rebroadcast of the 6:30 talk by our Resident Astronomer: “Comets and Meteors.” and headed up to the party. The sun loungers that usually line the sides of the pool had been replaced with chairs and tables from a couple of the restaurants and several singers were performing live music all evening.

We had a great time, ate lotsa lobsta, drank perhaps a bit much (though Cheryl didn’t wobble when she walked so it can’t have been that much), and enjoyed the evening with good friends.

Eventually, though, it was time to call it. Sadly we didn’t have a time change to give us a bit more sleep. Life is rough! But we’ll get by.

Later Gater,
R