Day 51 - 11/22/22 - At Sea to Sydney, Australia - Day 2

 Overnight the ship was rocking and rolling more than any other cruise we have been on.  That continued throughout the day.  For most of the day the ship was pitching (the bow was going up and down), but in the afternoon, a rolling motion (side to side) set in.  It was fun to watch the LIDO pool slosh over its walls sending torrents of water across the deck where we raised our feet like proverbial landing gear to allow the water to pass under towards the drains.  We observed this both at lunch and at dinner.

Cesare Quintero was Rachel's guest at the morning coffee chat.  He's the group manager and a singer in the Cantaré group that performed tonight.  He gave a lot of history about the group and some hints about the future.  I didn't know that originally Cantaré was a HAL production show, but in recent years it's morphed into a contracted show.  Afterwards Rachael gave one of her canned EXC talks on Games, but we didn't attend.  We did go back to Dr. Karen Woodman's Main Stage lecture on the topic of Exploring Indigenous Australian Languages.  It wasn't well attended and her presentation style isn't very appealing.  Her overhead slides are largely unreadable.  Unfortunately, she's going to be on for the next two weeks as well.  

The Captain's noon announcement was a bit delayed, but when he gave it, it was bad news.  The weather and sea conditions had deteriorated and the ship's speed had to be reduced.  We, therefore, were now aiming for a 9:45am arrival in Sydney.  He also gave the Covid #'s and we have 39 cases in isolation with no crew members affected.  There was one new case today.  These are still pretty good low numbers in my opinion.  

We skipped the 1pm re-showing of the Top Gun Maverick movie and packed our luggage for the border inspection tomorrow.  Fortunately, we don't have to pack our sodas or my CPAP.  Our stateroom attendant will move it to our new room 20 feet away.  The rest of our luggage has to be cleared as we are retuning from a foreign country (NZ) and the next cruise is entirely in Australian waters so there likely won't be a border inspection at the end of the 13 days.  I should add that while packing, we watched "Miss Angela" which is a documentary about a Cuban singer (Angela Alvarez) who performed her first concert in her 90's using all original songs she had written over the years.  Just a few days ago, she won a Latin Grammy for the oldest new artist at age 95.  It was a really good movie. 

The Captain gave updates throughout the day including at one point saying we've altered course to reduce the rolling motion.  But from my perspective, it never really happened.  In fact it seemed to get worse.  I would also note that we never saw him today, as he was likely on the bridge in a what they call a "RED" condition, which means that the bridge is fully staffed with the Captain, Staff Captain (2nd in Charge), and a full compliment of junior officers and crew. 

We ate a final dinner with Erik and Marilyn and amused ourselves with the LIDO pool wave action.  At one point a bow wave broke higher than the Lido windows and that's nine stories off the water line!  The ship shuddered and settled back down into the Tasman Sea which is known as one of the roughest in the world.  

Cantaré with Cesare 2nd from the left

Cantaré performed on stage but they had to alter their performance and sit on stools on stage and sing.  There were no fancy movements like in their typical style.  It was still very good.  Afterwards we returned to our stateroom for a final packing and updating my blog.  There continued a great deal of movement and rattling.  I suspect that will continue through the night.