Today is our second sea day.   Some use these days to just relax and recover from the shore excursions which can be quite tiring.   We however will have quite a busy day I fear.   First off there is a Cruise Critics meet to check up on what the others have found out about the Prinsendam and any little wrinkles that only the seasoned cruiser knows.   We could only get an early booking for the Wajang Theatre so it meant an early breakfast, no bad thing since it can be difficult to find a seat inside the Lido if you are late.

Straight after the cruise critics meeting we dashed off for Tina Faulkner's presentation on Future Cruises.   We were not sure about going, but it turned out to be much more interesting than we had thought it might be.   If you want to do Antarctic Cruising, do it now, the authorities are putting more and more restrictions on travel there.   I had always thought that booking the next cruise while on board was silly, as you are tied in to the early price, but we found that there is a guarantee that if the price goes down later, before the full amount is due, you can ask for the same.   It is not automatic, you do have to watch the price yourself and contact them.   A big benefit to non Americans is that the deposit is only $100 and is refundable, instead of the normal (for us) $400.   You do get quite a few benefits to encourage you to commit to HAL, rather than try a different line.   We were certainly glad we didn't miss that talk.

After lunch we went to Denis St-Onge's presentation "Plate Tectonics 101".   It is not a new subject to us, having done Geology courses with the Open University, but it was well presented and entertaining.   It was certainly a welcome refresher and appetizer for Iceland to come.

We have not seen many gannets since we left the Firth of Forth.   What we do see is fulmars all the time.   To the untrained eye they look like sea gulls, but they have stiff wings and they use these like a glider to fly on air currents as much as they can.   They are scavangers and have picked up the habit of following fishing boats and liners to pick up anything thrown overboard.   Fisherman, were in the habit of throwing overboat the results of gutting the fish, nowadays they are lucky to find any fish.   Similarly the kitchens on the liners would jettison the off cuts from prepping, but nowadays everything is kept aboard and goes for recycling, composting or landfill, at least on the conscientious lines it does.   So eventually the fulmars may lose their current habit of being ship followers.

We were obviously busy all day as we hardly took any photos, Carol did take one of the King Cobra towel art.   We finished the day with a film that was in the Wajang yesterday, Shutter Island.   We tried watching The Queen when we were on the Zaandam in 2007 and found the cinema's just don't have enough rake and peoples heads get in the way, but if you sit at the front you are too near the screen.   Since they show the film continuously on one of the TV channels the next day it is the easier option.

Captain Albert's Blog: At Sea