Day 15 At Sea Again

By morning, things have calmed down considerably and as usual, I join the regular early morning crafters. I can see myself doing more of this at home. Today, it is ribbon braiding, which, once you get the hang of it, is easier than some of our other projects. There’s another talk from the retired detective. This time, we are trying to solve a genuine unsolved murder from the 1930s. This has me wanting to utilise my family history skills to look up details of the main characters. Ron the detective says the name Qualtrough, which comes into the story, is common on the Isle of Wight. I doubt this at the time and it turns out is centred on the Liverpool area, so perhaps he meant Isle of Man.

There was hail on our balcony at lunchtime but we are all grateful for the calmer seas. Some of the lifts are playing up, so more exercise, rather than playing guess the lift, as we wonder which of the three in each bank of lifts will arrive first.

There was just time before craft to have a quick go at onboard curling. Winter Olympics this was not. It was not helped by the lurching boat as everyone’s ‘stone’ curved distinctly to the port. It was sad to attend my final craft session and say goodbye to my crafting buddies, Sandra and Barbara. We achieve our second ribbon braided card.

Day 16 Yes, Still At Sea

When we wake up, we are off the coast of Yorkshire, that would be quite a long way off but we see oil and gas rigs, as well as the occasional ship. When we go to breakfast, we can look to the east and see a large wind farm. I am my mother’s daughter, so I can pack efficiently in under ten minutes. I also travel light, so my single bag is under 13kg. I will admit though that I got the balance of thick and thin clothes wrong. We go to see the craft and art exhibition and our crafting efforts are getting a lot of positive attention; I think quite a few people now wish they’d joined us. I am still basking in and surprised by, Pam’s praise of my crafting skills and certainly, I seemed to get the hang of the various projects more quickly than most. Together with Sandra, I had been able to help others when the afternoon groups were a bit large for Pam and Paul.

We have plans to acquire enough for a packed lunch tomorrow and begin with bananas from the lunch offerings. I also have rather a large teabag stash, ready for teabag folding. We manage to squeeze in a talk about the wildlife of Norway from the Orca team and still have time for tea. This concentrates on birds. The fjords, which are 400-1300 metres deep, encourage wildlife that thrive in deep waters to come close to the coast in an area that is protected from the most severe storms. Phytoplankton, which are the bottom of the food chain, thrive. Phytoplankton produce 50% of our oxygen and absorb 40% of our carbon dioxide, so are critical to our survival. The over-fishing of herring in the 1960s had a devastating impact on seabirds. This can also allow jelly fish to bloom, which has a negative impact on the ecosystem.

We watch the sunset over the Essex coast, sad that our trip is over, although looking forward to a fully functioning shower and getting to grips with over 100 emails that I haven’t been able to just delete using my phone as they require some kind of action.

Day 17 Back Home

We have to vacate our cabin by 7.30. As we have opted to take our own luggage off in order not to miss our coach, we breakfast first. There are signs everywhere warning us that we can’t take our purloined sandwiches off the ship, so we have to abandon them in the cabin fridge. It turns out that you can wheel a one wheeled suitcase. We have travelled 3295 nautical miles and the 556 crew, predominantly from India and Indonesia, have looked after us very well.

Our lovely friends meet us once again and we are driven back past the sights of London to Victoria coach station. This looks very different to when we were here last time, in 2019. Our coach does not appear. It seems that, due to a different coach having a wheel issue, coaches are being swapped around. In the end a coach is found, a cheer goes up and we leave, half an hour after time. The drivers manage to make this up and after a 7½ hour journey we are back in Bideford on time. I can’t work out why the journey in this direction is an hour longer than the outgoing journey, even though the stops are slightly different. A taxi and then home to the piles of washing, a decent shower, a bed that doesn’t sway and a lot of work to catch up on.