Wednesday 12th March

The sea got lumpy overnight and we woke to 45mph wind and 3.5m waves, rain was heeming it down, flooding the balcony but the temperature was about 23°C so wasn’t all bad. Sailing through the Philippine Sea, we passed over the Challenger Deep, part of the Mariana Trench named after HMS Challenger who (in 1875) was the first ship to record its depth of 7 miles. Seven Miles Deep! don’t know how they did it, unless they had a 7 mile long piece of string and a very long tape measure.

We had somebody fall overboard today and in all that rough weather too, then we sank! It all started with a small fire in the officer’s quarters which spread until we had to abandon ship. I didn’t bother as I was having a cup of tea in the Lido, but all the ships company were having a lot of fun playing what we used to call in the Navy “war games” We went down to book a tour in Bombay (sorry mumble; or something like that) in the foyer there was a huge group of people in life jackets (or preservers as they now call them) and as I passed through the group I noticed the captain talking to a young girl. He was asking her questions like, what is your name? and, what is your number? Ah, I thought, some things never change. Poor girl was so flustered that she was having difficulty answering those questions, but I shouldn’t laugh it wasn’t that long ago I was asked for my name and when I paused to think, the young lady said quite sweetly “question too difficult for you?” so I know how she felt.

Anyway we booked a full day in Bomubia, may as well make use of those visas. Talk today was by John Penycate on religions of the world, he had some interesting things to say about the USA.

Carol spent most of the day asleep, didn’t even make the gym, it’s the rocking motion that does it. That meant that she read her book till four in the morning so I guess she will need to reset her body clock. That’s about all for today, by the way Laura, no one really fell overboard, there was no fire and we didn’t really sink just in case you were wondering, it was a practise just in case.