Monday, September 5, 2016
We had a short night last night with the time change and we
lose another hour tonight. So, while Clay was still in the gym at 5am and he
didn’t come back until almost 7:30am, I was still sleeping. It had been a
little rough for the past few hours cruising south in Baffin Bay along the
coast on the starboard side. It was rough enough that I was having some trouble
getting up and around and changed my answer to Clay’s question yesterday of
whether I still felt I could do next spring’s waitlisted cruise around
Australia with Oceania. It may not be up to us to decide as we haven’t been
offered a cabin yet. Anyway, around 8am we started turning into Sam Ford Fjord
and it got a lot calmer. As we reached Walker Arm around 10am, we found Le Boreal
ahead of us! Le Boreal is the ship we took to Antarctica, so we’re fond of her.
She was disabled and nearly sunk off the Falklands a year or so ago. So while
we knew she did NWP cruises, we weren’t aware that she had been brought back
into service and it was a happy surprise to see her speeding along our fjord.
The captain announced where we were and what we were doing around 9:30am. He
said this was a particularly scenic fjord and had clifftops at over a mile
high. You could realize the enormous scale of things when we saw Le Boreal.
Prior to that size check, it had seemed we were in pretty tight quarters. Of
course, we are a big ship and it actually was tight quarters for us as many
places you couldn’t see water beyond the ship before seeing a rock or scree
face. There were glaciers, tidewater glaciers, hanging glaciers, etc. The cloud
deck was low and it was raining hard all morning. It was about 35-37F all
morning, so cold but nowhere near freezing. It was all clouds and rain. As we
reached the furthest point we could travel in, there were some brief breaks in
the clouds and a little light and blue patches of sky visible as we did a 180
degree turn, though we both swore he spun in a complete circle once before
coming back around and heading back out the way we came in. The clouds were
even lower and heavier on the way back out. The captain came on at noon and
apologized that the weather hadn’t cooperated, but that as we went back by the
next bend to watch the starboard side for a lone polar bear that he had made
eye contact with on the way in. Now that is the side that Clay and I and mostly
the Cineflex had been watching on the way in and we hadn’t seen a polar bear.
In any event, we checked the now starboard side. Cineflex focused for a long
time on a little whitish blob on the hillside and we were told later that was
the polar bear. I guess that emphasizes the sheer size of things again. The
captain said he thought we were leaving polar bear areas and that would be our
last one. I guess Greenland has no polar bears? I guess Baffin Island has no
musk ox? They have been seen most every day since Nome but we found no Qivuit
for sale in Pond Inlet and no musk ox have been spotted. They seemed ubiquitous
before but the people of Pond Inlet seemed more focused on seals and narwhal,
neither of which we saw there. Evidently the people who went out on zodiac or
fast boat among other excursions yesterday saw animals in addition to birds as
the wildlife checklist had them listed for yesterday.
After breakfast and yoga this morning, there was a sale of
RRS Shackleton souvenirs in Crystal Plaza. It was well attended and possibly
better stocked than the Inaugural NWP Cruise souvenir sale. Clay got a $32
t-shirt. I decided to pass. They had a lot of jackets, polo shirts and I don’t
know what a long sleeved, cotton-collared polo-type shirt is called, but they
had those and fleece hoodies. There were no prices on anything, but as I was
handling a long sleeved shirt I heard a price come back to a woman near me and
it was over $100. I don’t know what she had asked about, but I figured I didn’t
need anything priceless on that table and gave it up. There were long lines to
pay again.
They are having a special Mozart tea in Palm Court this
afternoon. We haven’t attended any tea on Serenity so have no idea if the daily
event is special or how this differs. We had tacos and goulash at the Lido for
lunch. There is for me a really disgusting sounding menu in the dining room
tonight. We hope to try to get our remaining entitled reservations made between
5 and 6pm today and we’ll hope one can be tonight.
There is no Internet today. I will assume it is because of
the close high mountains and that as we cross Davis Strait this afternoon and
tonight and all day tomorrow that it will return. We are about 450nm from Illulissat,
Greenland. We have a complimentary community visit scheduled there for 8am and
a paid excursion at 12:30pm for a Scenic Walk to Sermermiut for $178 for both.
We have watched on TV the destination/excursion talk on Illulissat and they
don’t know whether we will dock or anchor and tender. The general feeling is
that it won’t matter for excursions somehow. They have been requiring a ticket
of some kind to get a ride off this ship since Nome. I don’t see how that won’t
change if we are not docked. Anyway, I guess they think whether we dock and
walk off, or tender to a dock that both docks will be in general proximity. I
guess from that perspective maybe it won’t matter. We’ll see. I’d hate to have
to tender twice!
The ride was rough once we got back into open water this
afternoon. So, after lunch at Lido we spent the afternoon in the cabin. We
watched a string of icebergs for a while with a random sailboat thrown in! They
were having a rough day! Clay went to the library and checked out “Aloha” which
he didn’t remember seeing in the theater. He managed to watch it all today. I
am still working hard on the cross stitch to try to get the kit Clay picked out
before it is too late. I am down to almost only white left to do, but it is a
big section. We’ll see. Clay went out again after 5pm to try to get the rest of
our specialty restaurant reservations. Success! 4 reservations made at 6pm at
Prego and Silk Road. I don’t know why they had to make it so hard and just
couldn’t do this one of the first 2 times we asked.
There was nothing we really wanted from the dinner menu
tonight but Clay couldn’t get us in another restaurant tonight so off we went.
I had the braised oxtail and Clay had perch. Both were good, probably better
than we expected. Also service returned to norm tonight after our 2-night
absence. We can only hope it holds. I jokingly told the waiter who wondered
where we’d been that we had better service in one restaurant and worse service
in the other. Both waiters wondered what I had to say about them, but I wouldn’t
say. The senior waiter decided he has 12 days to become my number one waiter.
Hopefully he will actually earn that spot! We didn’t break it to him that we
had 4 nights of reservations elsewhere!
Clay got Internet after dinner when it has been unavailable
all day so I’ll try to get this posted now. We’ve already turned the clocks forward
an hour. We should now be on Greenland time.
