Thursday 13 January

The first thing to say is that there will be more for today.  This is just a starter post.

After we had returned to the ship a voice came over the ship’s PA to say that there had been a change of captain and that ‘The Derbyshire Devil’ as he called himself, was now in charge.

He sounds quite a wag which is a change from the previous captain who came from somewhere in the Balkans and had a sense of humour akin to 'Novax' Djokovic’s.

Our new captain explained that we would set off around 4 hours late as we needed to refuel. I’m finding that hard to believe as the fuel barge had pulled up alongside the ship just below our cabin at around 3.30pm, two hours before our originally scheduled departure time of 5.30pm and I have never known it to take much more than an hour or so to refuel a ship.

Anyway, true to what he had said, we moved off from our berth at 9.30pm.  Meanwhile we got our dinner on time and then had time for a drink in one of the bars where one of the singers works.  An Aussie, she sings well and has a good on-stage manner between songs. Each evening she has a different theme so we’re looking forward to some more evenings with her.

From there we moved on to the theatre to watch the ship’s company “The Headliners” present one of their shows - in this case, “Electric Avenue”, focussing on the 80s. If I’m honest, it was pretty dire with, as Simon Cowell would put it, “some tuning issues”, choreography which didn’t quite come together somehow and some individual singers massacring some well-known songs. As Elizabeth put it, “if you’re going to do Michael Jackson, you’ve got to be very good!”

We hadn’t finished our drinks as we arrived at the theatre and were told that we couldn’t take them in as we had to wear our masks “at all times”.  There was social distancing in place – well sort of.  Pairs of seats were separated by forbidden seats, but there were people sitting right in front and behind others in the various rows.

We managed to get two seats right at the back and next to the aisle, so when the show ended and we were allowed to leave row by row, we got out straightaway. Something to bear in mind for another day.

Thursday Morning

There was - and still is - the slightest amount of rocking and rolling overnight as we venture outside the protective ring of the Caribbean islands. As I'm sure you'll know, most of the Eastern Caribbean islands form a crescent from Puerto Rico in the north-west down to the South American mainland in the south. Islands such as Barbados and the Turks & Caicos islands, the Bahamas etc. are outside this ring - as we are currently.

The slight movement is accompanied by the sound of occasional creaking. Out here it makes me think of Nelson with his senior officers all poring over maps in that beautiful room they used to have at the back of naval warships contemplating their next moves against the pesky French or those wretched pirates.

Cruisemapper

You may or may not be aware that you can track where cruise ships are and see their itineraries on Cruisemapper, an app and a website. It shows where we are and that we are trailing behind Royal Caribbean's Harmony of the Seas, a massive cruise ship which left St Maarten some time before us and which is heading back to Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale at the end of its current cruise.

There has been a lot of honking of the ship's horn this morning, so perhaps the captain is telling them to move over so that we can pass!!

As I think I mentioned, we did get our bathrobes and here's the evidence -