Oh Captain, My Captain

With all these sea days – while I’ve been working quite a bit, the ship’s crew comes up with all kinds of things to keep people entertained. We are particularly fortunate given our cabin that we were invited to a couple of special things hosted by the Captain today.

The first was a tour of the ship’s bridge with only eight of us. It is incredibly impressive with the electronics and all of the redundancy, however in Chile, there are no electronic navigation charts! So it’s back to the paper versions which the Captain explained so well.

As I mentioned before, he is a proponent of the use of the sextant which is so rare in navigation of large vessels today, but he has instilled a spark in his officers who are carrying the torch and have a bit of a competition to see who can mark the location of the ship most accurately. There were at least six nationalities represented on the bridge, all of whom had unbelievable credentials. We are safe!

The next event was our dinner. It is called the Best of the Best and happens for passengers in particular cabin classes. The Executive Chef gets to strut his stuff and the head sommelier as well with the wine parings. Other than the incredible multi-course menu, the fun is having such a fabulous time with all of the chief officers and their great stories. We were seated halfway down the table on the right across from the Captain which made for lively conversation.

The menu.

Needless to say the food and wine pairings were phenomenal! Yes, that is gold leaf on top of the caviar on top of the lobster!

Tomorrow, hopefully the Moai statues of Easter Island! While the swells are pretty big, he has a plan to get us on the island. Many cruise ships that come here (~40%) never can actually visit. This ship is small so he has more options.