Wednesday 23rd April

Woke to the sun shining straight in my face, indicating we had entered the Red Sea and were now heading North, so no chance of a lie in this morning then. Speed has reduced to 20 knots, still not down to normal cruising speed but a little less than the bone rattling 23 of yesterday. Weather continues to be extremely hot and humidity up in the low to mid nineties.

We spent a lazy morning, broken by a talk by Richard Holdaway on the Planets and the Solar system followed later by a talk on Petra and Palmyra which surprisingly enough was very good, even though this was the speakers first lecture on a ship and first cruise, he wove a great story through Rome, Syria, Ancient Greece and ended up with a Syrian Flag salesman on Hadrian’s wall and an Essex slave girl in South Shields, all in Roman times I hasten to add, but it was really neat how he tied up all the loose ends. (Carol swerved both talks and went sun worshipping).

After spotting one or two small pods of dolphins earlier on, we found ourselves in a huge pod they were everywhere, heading across our route. Some playing around our bows and breaking bow wave but most seemed intent on carrying on their journey, leaping over the waves in synchronised jumps, looking for all the world like a marine version of the Grand National. They swam at high speed towards the ship and just as it looked like they were going to slam right into us, they went deep and swam under us, fantastic. No pictures, sorry, it was all over in a flash and it appears I’m not very good at videoing 😥 .

Thanks for all the comments by the way, and no I didn’t buy the headgear as there was no way I could tie it like the guy who was trying to sell it to me, I would have just ended up with an expensive tea towel. Dragged ourselves to the gym despite the heat and got back to find an invite to dine with the officers tomorrow, (electro technical that is, should be interesting for me, not sure about Carol). Spent a nice evening with a whiskey, watching the ships pass in the night before going down to dinner. That’s about all for today.