They call me LeRoy
If I may be so bold as to steal the first lines of Melville's Moby Dick in my title. The epic sea adventure of Ishmael and his battle with the whale. Vialula and I are in day 5 of our 5 straight days at sea on our way over to see Easter Island. We have a date with Dum Dum, another stolen reference, this time to the movie Night at the Museum. Dum Dum is the large Moai statue in the movie that loves his gum gum. Our gala night last night had a much smaller scale statue as our table center pieces. Ours was named Tom, but he was the silent type.
We have spoken to many people on board and for several of them this stop is one of their bucket list items. And these are people who have made several around the world cruises. So Vi and I are looking forward to it.
Days at sea. These are some of my favorite times. You make yourself as busy or as laid back as you want but the one thing you cannot escape is the absolute beauty of the ocean out here. It is completely indescribable and pictures just cannot do it justice. Take a look at a map and you will see where we are. The words "middle of nowhere" does not do it justice. But the color of the water is amazing. Crayola would do good to copy that color if possible and call it Perfect Blue. Every time I am out on our balcony or out on one of the decks that open to the sea, I almost want to just jump in. It is mesmerizing. People have seen whales, dolphins by the tons, fish, jellyfish, etc. Apparently, the ocean is full of the stuff. Who knew?
We have been chasing the sun since we left Chile. The sunsets are fantastic and they are late. For some strange reason we are currently on Eastern Standard time. And that changed just last night. Before that we were on Atlantic time and yet we are 2000 miles west of South America. But if you look at that map again you will see how South America swings out to the east. So because of that the sunsets are very late. Last night it was still fairly light at 10:00 pm. I hear the time starts catching up to what I will call normal very soon and then, very often. We will begin "losing" hours every day and we will also be losing a day soon. But we gain it back down the sea road.
Want some numbers? Good. Let's see, so far we have traveled a total of 5,471 nautical miles on our trip. We are chugging along at a clip of about 17 knots. We currently have 297.8 miles to go before we get to the islands. We have traveled 1947 miles since Arica, Chile, and Easter Island is part of Chile. I did not know that. Our course has been right at 256 for the last five days so you can see we are heading just a little south too. Straight due west would be a heading of 270. The ocean is currently only 10,900 feet deep. I have seen it as deep as 18,500 feet. That is over 3 miles. That depth is amazing to me. Another thing that is simply amazing to me is where do they keep enough food and water and everything else they have for 1380 passengers, 600 plus crew and everything else? I have not seen one speck of land or one boat for 5 days straight. We have been self contained lavishly for that entire time and the engines have not stopped running, the water has not stopped running and you can believe the food has not stopped running. Amazing.
Ok, I am beginning to see some heads nodding off. I will cut it short. Don't want to bore you. Anyway, just want everyone to know that we are having an absolute stupendous time so far, and we are only out about two and a half weeks. WOW. Talk to you soon after we take our gum out to Dum Dum to make him happy. Hope you enjoy the reads and please feel free to comment on them. Vialula and I would appreciate the feedback. Let's us know if we are the only ones reading what we write. Thanks again to all of you out there making all of this possible. Wish you were all here with us.
LeRoy (Ishmael)
 |
| Vi and Tom at dinner |
We have spoken to many people on board and for several of them this stop is one of their bucket list items. And these are people who have made several around the world cruises. So Vi and I are looking forward to it.
Days at sea. These are some of my favorite times. You make yourself as busy or as laid back as you want but the one thing you cannot escape is the absolute beauty of the ocean out here. It is completely indescribable and pictures just cannot do it justice. Take a look at a map and you will see where we are. The words "middle of nowhere" does not do it justice. But the color of the water is amazing. Crayola would do good to copy that color if possible and call it Perfect Blue. Every time I am out on our balcony or out on one of the decks that open to the sea, I almost want to just jump in. It is mesmerizing. People have seen whales, dolphins by the tons, fish, jellyfish, etc. Apparently, the ocean is full of the stuff. Who knew?
We have been chasing the sun since we left Chile. The sunsets are fantastic and they are late. For some strange reason we are currently on Eastern Standard time. And that changed just last night. Before that we were on Atlantic time and yet we are 2000 miles west of South America. But if you look at that map again you will see how South America swings out to the east. So because of that the sunsets are very late. Last night it was still fairly light at 10:00 pm. I hear the time starts catching up to what I will call normal very soon and then, very often. We will begin "losing" hours every day and we will also be losing a day soon. But we gain it back down the sea road.Want some numbers? Good. Let's see, so far we have traveled a total of 5,471 nautical miles on our trip. We are chugging along at a clip of about 17 knots. We currently have 297.8 miles to go before we get to the islands. We have traveled 1947 miles since Arica, Chile, and Easter Island is part of Chile. I did not know that. Our course has been right at 256 for the last five days so you can see we are heading just a little south too. Straight due west would be a heading of 270. The ocean is currently only 10,900 feet deep. I have seen it as deep as 18,500 feet. That is over 3 miles. That depth is amazing to me. Another thing that is simply amazing to me is where do they keep enough food and water and everything else they have for 1380 passengers, 600 plus crew and everything else? I have not seen one speck of land or one boat for 5 days straight. We have been self contained lavishly for that entire time and the engines have not stopped running, the water has not stopped running and you can believe the food has not stopped running. Amazing.
Ok, I am beginning to see some heads nodding off. I will cut it short. Don't want to bore you. Anyway, just want everyone to know that we are having an absolute stupendous time so far, and we are only out about two and a half weeks. WOW. Talk to you soon after we take our gum out to Dum Dum to make him happy. Hope you enjoy the reads and please feel free to comment on them. Vialula and I would appreciate the feedback. Let's us know if we are the only ones reading what we write. Thanks again to all of you out there making all of this possible. Wish you were all here with us.
Amazing. We are enjoying every blog
ReplyDeleteThanks for following us in our travels! Trying to keep it informative, but fun!
DeleteHow do you expect us to learn geography if you don't keep us posted? See if you can figure out what all those statues are about anyway.
ReplyDeleteNext post has more information about the statues! Thanks for reading!
DeleteI'm enjoying every minute!! World history and geography were long ago for me, so I'm having a bit of a refresher, and enjoying it a lot more this time around!!! Kevin and I are trying to keep up on the miniature globe on his desk!! May need stronger glasses before you return! Looking good in the tux, Leroy and of course Vi is as beautiful as ever!!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comments. We love trying to put into words what we are seeing. It's more difficult than you think!
DeleteI LOVE reading this! Living vicariously through you! The kids love it too, looking at maps and learning so much. You are our geography curriculum until you get home! The numbers are interesting too, it's quite an adventure.
ReplyDelete