A day at sea and loads to do

A very windy walk

Much excitement last evening as it’s the Captain’s Reception in the Panorama Lounge, along with senior officers and very important people. Naturally, we didn’t attend. Having done these events before, you queue out of a door for half an hour, drink a glass of champagne and retreat to your room. So we were no shows. It wasn’t mandatory. However there is a cocktail reception for first time Silversea guests at 11:45 this morning. Despite the fact we shall be sold at, we shall be there!

Lovely dinner in La Terrassa again. We sat next to a couple of Brits who emigrated to Canada some 35 years ago and, in conversation, touched on engineering. He had been an engineer and referred to “aluminum” to the horror of all concerned. You will not, I declared, refer to aluminum again. It is “aluminium” and ever more shall be so. Suitably chastened, he admitted the error of his ways.

After dinner and in our suite, light still pours through our windows at 10:30pm. We are to gain an hour tonight to get us aligned with Icelandic time. We sleep the sleep of the just and when we wake during the night, twilight illuminates the waves. Come the morning and we have a full day at sea, which is packed with “enrichment” activities. We choose our schedule while sipping our morning juice in bed. Breakfast is until 10am so we amble in to the buffet restaurant with a smile. All is good and the selection is eclectic. We breakfast on fruit, muesli, more fruit, toast and jam, coffee and, in Gabrielle’s case, more fruit.

Suitably refreshed we head off to get our kit on for a walk round the jogging track. Spanish bloom it isn’t between the Hebrides and Iceland. Around 8C with a vicious wind chill, so, as we set off, we are unaware that around the corner of the bow area there is an Arctic blast. We are barely able to stand in this area but needs must and we have 10 laps to achieve to hit one mile. It’s a bitter battle between us, the gale and those other walkers who have decided, after seeing us, that they will walk in the contrary direction. That’s fine in principle but the track in places narrows to one person width and so you either give way (we don’t - coming through!) or you plough on regardless. Then of course there are those who have come to have a nice quiet stroll. Don’t they know we are on a mission?

Having achieved 10 blustery laps we head back to the room, shed our top layers and head to the Panorama Lounge, books in hand. There a refreshing coffee awaits (decaf, naturally) and we settle down to read and in my case to write this. It’s very civilised and it belies the chaos that awaits us tomorrow when we head out to a glacial lake and interact with icebergs. Gabrielle will of course describe this in detail.

The cocktail reception came and went without any real effort at selling at us. A glass of champagne helped settle queasy stomachs from the ship’s motion, although Gabrielle is still feeling it quite badly today. What doesn’t help her is that I have no motion sickness at all - no sense, no feeling. It’s likely to stay today as we are in open water, heading up to Iceland. Once we are sitting in and around the coast, things should improve. Maybe. Meanwhile, discretion being the better part of valour, we choose to stay in our room and watch the enrichment lectures on the live television feed from the lecture theatre.

Our final task this afternoon after an attempted snooze - fine for me but no sleep for Gabrielle - is to layout our cold weather gear for an early start tomorrow.

Other general factoids: we appear to have largely mastered the Internet which although slow does work. Eventually. We have mostly recovered from the excesses of our first night. The clocks went back an hour last night which instead of giving us an extra hour in bed, meant that we were wide awake early. We are travelling at an average 13.7 knots, the barometer is falling and so is the rain now. The sea - a kilometre deep beneath us - is classified as rough with 7-8 ft waves, driven by wind at 6-7 on the Beaufort scale. The weather is grey with heavy threatening clouds and 80% chance of rain for Djúpivogur tomorrow when we have a long bus journey to the glacial lagoon. It’s gonna be a bumpy ride!

On the plus side, there have been no earthquakes or volcanic eruptions. Yet. After all, this is Iceland, a land born of ice and fire.