Sea Days - Namibia to Senegal
April 12-18, 2024 - Seven sea days in a row! As we are nearing the end of our trip, the notion of 7 sea days is not as daunting as it might have been in the beginning, as we tried to use some of the time to prep for our return home, as once we reach Europe we will be busy in ports almost everyday. Most days were the typical activities, but here are a couple of unique things from each day.
April 12 - Dinner with friends: We started our first sea with a fabulous dinner for 8 people in Manfredi’s restaurant, in a private room with a large table. We enjoyed the company of 3 couples, all from Minnesota, who we’ve mentioned in other posts. It was a wonderful dinner, which thanks to something Cathy brought to read at the beginning, was focused on Gratitude —and which included a lot of laughs. It felt a bit like a ‘farewell’ dinner, which we were not ready for, so we are booked to do it again, and include Debby and Steve from Pittsburgh (as part of our pre-dinner drinks group and part of the trivia team Ann Marie joins occasionally). That will be May 4, and will truly be our farewell dinner.
April 13 - We spend a few hours today packing things we will not be using for the rest of our trip and some purchases we made. We also put aside some clothes and shoes we plan to donate that we will not be bringing home with us. This week we also had our World Cruise Jacket sleeves altered for us by the onboard tailor.
April 14 - Coffee Chat with the Captain and First Engineer: The guests Verity had at today’s coffee chat (a regular thing at 8:30 on sea days) were the Captain and First Engineer and it was great to be able to ask them questions. The captain talked about his training and career path, the role of the pilots/tugs in each port, about the equipment used on the bridge to avoid all the small fishing boats in ports like Vietnam and Indonesia, and he talked about some of his favorite ports (Sweden) and he talked about what he does on vacation (he stays home). The First Engineer talked about his training and career path, about fuel consumption, maintenance of equipment on the ship and what he does on vacation (he has 3 daughters, so he said his time at sea is his vacation!). It was interesting to hear from the Chief Engineer about the amount of fuel loaded to the ship on Namibia, and the amount expected to he used during these 7 seas days. Most surprising was to realize more than 50% of our paid fare of each passenger goes to fuel.
April 15 - Zero Point / Null Island: We learned in yesterday’s coffee chat that the captain had gained approval to deviate from our straight course to Senegal so that we would go by Null Island, which isn’t really an island but merely a buoy that sits in 6500 feet deep water at 0 degrees latitude and 0 degrees longitude right on the equator line. As the Captain announce that we were reaching the exact location we all went to the Port side of the ship to see if we could spot the buoy, but we could not see it. The Captain stopped the ship at the exact spot, but the buoy was gone. Apparently since this is so close to the coast of Africa, the powers that be claimed it as their waters and had the buoy removed sometime over the last year or so. We did take a selfie from deck 2 when the ship stopped and now have a record of us being here as well as a certificate from Viking that we are now Emerald Shellback’s! It is not the greatest picture of us but it was another opportunity to celebrate how grateful we are for these experiences.
April 16 - Tonight we had dinner with two other couples at Chef’s Table with a California Cuisine. It will most likely be our last time at Chef’s Table as we have already had the opportunity to go to most if not all their different cuisine’s that they offered several times during our journey. We liked some cuisine’s more than others, but we were proud that we tried new and different foods each time and the wine pairing they did with each menu was different too and since it is always a set menu for the evening we did not have to make any choices on what to have for dinner.
April 17 & 18 - The last of our long stretch of sea days and everyone is starting to talk about home - all the family and friends we miss, what foods from home we our looking forward to having again, and packing up all we brought with us and what we picked up along the way. We will only have 3 more sea days as the time is going so fast now. Most people are looking forward to simple foods like grilled cheese sandwiches, cold cereal, humus, chips and peanut butter and jelly. So as always the chef’s have been doing their best to make grilled cheese and pita chips. The crew here is amazing!
Location - 0 N 0 E on the equator