Sir Francis Drake
KMH has taken like a duck to water to life on the ship. She orders all the special things that Osman suggests and even brilliantly invented an imaginary friend so she can have two caviars for herself. She then found a loop hole in the amuse-bouche law and got a second helping; a feat that has never been successfully completed in international waters. She prefers breakfast in bed and doesn’t run around the deck all day as we do, but she is fully into the spirit of things.
She does however have a growing list of enemies that she reports to us at meals. So far these include: The man who didn’t put enough dressing on her salad; the woman dancing as we left South Hampton (she was up with the band in spandex and K found her bad dancing while thinking she was good- offensive); the couple who stood in front of her as she was looking at the New York skyline; the woman who picked up her jacket to move it to another chair “with just her two index fingers like it smelled”; and I haven’t even gotten to the enemies at the bridge table where she arrives like a Godzilla of master points to these elderly bunnies.
Thomas and I have been so sleepy it's hard to get through our lectures. There was one on being a kidnapping negotiator (don’t go to Mexico or Pakistan or Nigeria), one on the deep sea and one on Vietnam vets (lots of flag waving).
The formality aboard has gone way down- it used to be four formal nighst and now it is only two and the other nights all you have to do is put on a collared shirt like Town school.
Indeed the sleeping has been epic. If we wake at night we are rocked back to sleep almost immediately. Best of all, we have added naps in the sun with towels over our heads. This morning I asked Thomas why one doesn’t invent a bed that rocks you like this and he said what is different on the ocean is one goes up and down very slowly perhaps as much as 10-15 feet .. so it is more like being in the womb than a rocking chair
Oh I just saw dolphins jumping through the gray freezing sea. There is nothing on this earth more wonderful than a dolphin.
Nothing
We had a very jolly English biologist speak about the ocean and she reminded us that the earth is 70% ocean and the Pacific alone is 46%.
The Mariana tench is 11k deep and Mount Everest would fit with room to spare. It is pitch dark down there and very cold, but of course never freezing. If it froze, we would be screwed. We have only explored 5 percent of our oceans; so we know almost nothing about the thing that is the biggest thing.
More fun facts: sound travels four times faster in ocean than in air, and elephants are the same size as a blue whale's tongue.
For her next talk she will explain why sharks are the most wonderful things and why we should hug one today.
Osman looks exactly the same as he did 20 years ago -still very handsome and very funny. He said this past year he encountered the biggest waves in his very long career- 45 feet. Think about that. His room is in the very front of the boat and pretty low down so the sound must have been horrendous. I asked if he was scared and he said no- he had two whiskeys and slept like a baby.
Thomas attempted to cheer up our sommelier this year by trying a new tactic- going very expensive with huge tips in the hope he will let us off the hook one or two nights.
Nope. He is like mom’s hummingbirds after she bought the high sucrose formula and then doubled the sucrose. He actually hovers by the table; even Mimi has been trained in the dark art of Prosecco drinking. I can report she is doing a valiant job swilling her little glass.
Oh she made a new friend and a new enemy at the bridge table!
Her partner is decent and she likes her but they played against a 95 year old English man who picked up the something before the something and she announced they would have to “call the director”
To which he mumbled he thought this was a friendly game on the seas and she in essence told him to fick off.
We told her never to speak to Osman directly and she ignored us so we are terrified that 20 years of careful sucking up will go down the drain.
Someone must speak to Nancy Pelosi because there is an arcane useless law that makes it impossible to get on the ship in the US and not take the entire voyage. Meaning! the QM2 is coming to San Francisco (!) and we can’t take it unless we are willing to stay on until Auckland New Zealand three weeks later.
I love this ship but three weeks is a lot.
My good friend /masseur / spiritual guru only refers to the ocean as mama ocean and it is why we are friends. And even though I like to look at the ocean from a ship dressed in black tie, and he swims with great whites off china beach, we agree that the ocean is as mighty and beautiful and terrifying and necessary for life as your mother; and we never turn our backs on her.
At 11 pm tonight we will be half way across. How very sad that is.
