Day 4 Monday At Sea

Lazy day photos
Monday January 7
It was a lazy day at sea except for the for the wild seas. At noon, the bridge said we were in 8-10 foot seas. The ship was rocking and swaying at that point. On the way to the pool deck for the Mexican buffet there for lunch, one passenger noted that people were staggering aound like drunken sailors, and it was true. For every 5 or 6 steps someone might take, there would be a sideways stagger to one side or the other. By 4pm the swells seemed to have roughly doubled in size, which would make them 15-20 feet. Even though we saw lots of people in bathing suits, the pool was empty and netted over because the sailing was too rough. People were still taking advantage of the lounges in the sun and warm weather though.
Notwithstanding the rough seas, we did do several activities throughout the day. Clay did his walking early. It looks like the workout room is open early, before the published 6am start time. If that continues, Clay will probably do all his morning walking there. The first morning outside on deck 12, the deck crew was washing things down right up to 6am so the deck was wet all through Clay's walk. Clay and Margie also attended Terry Breen's lecture on the Panama Canal from 9:30am to 10:30am while Debbie did some kickboxing and Pilates. The seas got to Margie so she did not stay for the second lecture on Cartegena, our next port, but Clay toughed it out. The talks are given in the theater which is right at the front of the ship. It was pretty bouncy there. The fitness room is on the same deck as our cabin, 7, but as far forward as the Constellation Theater and it is really bouncy too, sadly for Debbie.
The afternoon offerred a chance for Debbie and Marge to catch a nap, and for Clay to read the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. These are smaller format printed on the ship. There is normally a charge for this service, but we are getting these free as part of Regent's customer loyalty program along with free internet and 3 hours of phone time per segment. Debbie did make it to a fabulous abs class and stretch and relax later in the afternoon. She skipped a long circuit training class because of the rough ride, though.
There is no show tonight as they are showing college football in the main theatre. Hal Frazer did have his tribute to Elton John in the Observation Lounge, but the ride was so rough up there the night before and with the waves appearing at twice the size today we all decided that we were just not up to it. We have heard such good reviews of this show, but sadly we just couldn't make it.
For pictures today, we will show you some of the food we have been eating. On Mariner right now, the menus are not available on TV as they were on the 2006 Voyager World Cruise. But we have started getting them delivered to our suite the night before so we can plan our day's main activity, where and what we will eat. They only deliver the Compass Rose lunch and dinner and dessert menus and the La Veranda dinner menu, they do not deliver menus for Signatures or Latitudes. We wanted to wait and see the Latitudes menu before making a decision about dining there. On the 2006 Voyager WC, we never had a problem getting a day of reservation or learning what the menu would be for a few weeks and making a reservation into the next segment. We tried to book Latitudes for last night at CR at lunch, but we were told there were no reservations available for this segment. Some of understood that we were offered a priority waitlist for the remainder of this segment, through the 15th and others of us understood that we we only priority waitlisted for last night. In any event, we have not heard anything at all back about it and are assuming that we are just shut out in any event. We were also not offered the opportunity to book for the next segment or any other segments after that as part of our Gold level status perks of priority reservations. Anyway.
On the subject of Gold Level benefits, Internet access has been pretty good. It is not great, but it is not terrible either. It is a good benefit.
We do want to apologize to people who wanted to be able to post comments here on the blog. Since AOL loading is pretty slow and internet access is unpredictable onboard, we have disabled the comments option on the blog. We recognize it may be an inconvenience, but sometimes compromises have to be made and this is one of ours. We are just not willing to take on the time and responsibility that managing comments would involve. Sorry.
We did get a request from a reader for a list of current staff. That information had been published in a past issue of Passages (the daily ship's newsletter) and it is typed up below.
Captain Alfredo Romeo (we believe we recall him to have said in his speech at his reception in Constellation Theater that he would be leaving midway through the Circumnavigation in Buenos Aires and that he would be replacedby Capt. Delavault (sp?) for the last 2 segments)
Staff Captain Magnus Schalin
Chief Engineer Giovanni Berlingieri
Hotel Director Richard Fenn
Cruise Director Bryan Townsend
Cruise Consultant Brian O'Brien
Safety Officer Kyriakos Karros
Security Officer Paul Snowball
Ship's Doctor Dr. Jean Claude Richard (we heard at breakfast that he was doing a good business in $300 shots for seasickness! Yikes!)
Staff Chief Engineer Aldo Casillo
Hotel Engineer Salvatore Stella
Chief Electrician Denis Laouenan
F&B Manager Ivar Drageseth
Financial Officer Paul Meyers
Human Resources Mgr. Deborah Bennett
Executive Chef Mike Romhild
Dining Room Manager Ludovic Chevrot
Asst. F&B Mgr. Arjan Scheepers
Housekeepter Sunny Kekic
Guest Relations Mgr. Manuela Neuherz
Travel Concierge Mgr. Scott Kinney
Clearance Officer Helga Hohenwarter
Asst. Cruise Director David Guy
Social Hostess Elsa McLean
Computer Instructor Wayne Keddle
Lazy day photos