Cruising the Indian Ocean, Day 5

The captain announced at his cocktail party that we had reached the midpoint of our Indian Ocean crossing at precisely noon. He had a big smile so I suspect he was exaggerating. In any event, this morning we are more than half way. As we slowly creep further north towards the Equator, it gets hotter everyday. Last night we encountered some big swells as I was awakened by my bed side drawer opening and slamming shut a few random times. This morning we can see yesterday's chop is gone. There seem to be infrequent swells. The captain says they are variable between 6 and 10 feet. They are causing enough ship movement that they had to drain the swimming pool again. The pool deck gets a surprising amount of use so I am sure the empty pool, especially as it gets hotter, must be causing some consternation.

This morning the Oscars are airing live onboard which seems to be having a negative impact on Internet bandwidth. It also caused a shortage of Marketplace waiters. Service was fine, they just seemed more harried. I found tiny snackpack sized New Zealand skim milk, fruit flavored yogurt this morning. A new waiter commented that I was having a very light breakfast. I went back and tried one of the small bowls of muesli that I had first noticed yesterday. It was okay but too nutty for my tastes every day. Clay had announced yesterday that he was having cereal for breakfast. He came back to the table yesterday with a hot plate of eggs and meat. When I asked he said he forgot. I reminded him and today he had Cheerios with his daily banana. He usually goes back for a muffin that he usually carries to Palm Court to eat there. Today he went back and returned with a minute steak, a jar of mustard and a hard roll! He skipped the muffin.

Clay plans to go to the Hollywood Theater movie at 2:30pm. It is Bruce Willis' "Death Wish". We've seen it so I don't plan to go. We have approved Waterside's dinner menu. It is casual night. There is a Cruise Critic meet & mingle tonight at 5:15 pm. I expect we'll attend. Reflections states they'll turn off the deck lights tonight from 10:30 pm to 12:30 am for unhosted southern hemisphere skygazing, weather permitting. Clay says he'll set an alarm to get up. Ha! Of course, since he's gone to bed for the night by 8:30 pm, he's not exaggerating. I don't know if we'll go or not. We'd be more likely to if it was hosted, but I guess they couldn't find any one to do that.

We are enjoying this long stretch of sea days. There will be some stress ahead as the "hardship" ports are ahead without much respite. Something for everyone.

We are 3 or 4 days into seeing no sign of life other than a few flying fish. I seriously have not even seen a jet contrail in the sky for at least 3 days. We are traversing a great blue uninhabited void.