Tuesday 20^th May 2014

Forecast for today is cloudy skies, chance of light rain and an expected maximum temperature of 21°.

We will spend al day at sea sailing in a south westerly direction across the Mediterranean Sea towards Gibraltar.

After a bit of a sleep-in we had breakfast in the Horizon Café and then attended the port lecture at 10:00am on Gibraltar in the Princess Theatre. We stayed in the theatre for a lecture by one of the Deck Officers “Navigation @ sea”. It was all about the systems and processes used to navigate Emerald Princess during the voyage. It was very interesting. The very large steering wheels of the past have now been replaced and the one on Emerald Princess is about the size of that in a car. After the course has been plotted and entered into the computer by the Navigator the rest is mostly done by the autopilot. The only time they use the manual steering in for entering and leaving harbour or in emergencies.

All the sitting down made us hungry so we toddled off to the Wheelhouse bar for lunch, the theme was “British Pub Lunch” so we had fish & chips, washed down with a Guinness for me and a glass of wine for Lynne. I finished off with bread & butter pudding. We were joined at lunch by a lovely couple from Southampton, so we spent a wonderful hour over lunch discussing England, Australia, the British Empire and the Royal Family.

After lunch Lynne went back to the Theatre to see the movie “Captain Phillips” which she really enjoyed. I plan on watching it on one of the plane flights on the way home. I spent a restful few hours reading my book and enjoying a whiskey on the balcony.

When Lynne returned from theatre we went to afternoon tea in the Da Vinci Dining room where they served excellent sandwiches (with the crust cut off), cakes and scones with jam & cream - it is the first time I have had marmalade jam on scones. It was now time to get our daily exercise so we did a quick 2 laps of the promenade deck. With our exercise for the day completed it was now time to get changed and head to dinner, (all that exercise builds up an appetite).

It was Italian night in the dining room with all the waiters dressed as Italian waiters, (I wonder if there will be a French night, and if so will they have “the fallen Madonna with the big boobies”, haur haur haur)!!