Sunday, September 21, 2025

Sea day, Atlantic Ocean

When we woke this morning we were anchored off the coast of Horta, Azores, Portugal. It was a fine day with clear skies, moderate temperatures, and calm seas. Since there was no pier to tie up to we had to anchor and tender in for our scheduled shore excursion. On our way down to Allura Lounge to get our bus number tag we ran into a woman who told us all the shore excursions had been cancelled. This was soon confirmed. The reason given was that it was too windy to safely tender in. I do not think anybody fell for that lame excuse. It was not windy and the seas were very calm. I have tendered in under worse conditions. Somebody suggested that there was a storm brewing in the Atlantic and that the captain wanted to get a head of it hence the pretext of the less than safe conditions to tender. About an hour later the ship weighted anchor and we began our trans-Atlantic crossing. The views of the islands of the little archipelago were very nice with nearly cloudless skies and clean air. After breakfast in Terrace we settled down in Baristas to read. Since everybody was aboard, every venue, including Barristas were a bit crowded. Despite the cool temperatures there were a few people in the pool and lounging around on the pool deck.

After lunch, also in Terrace, we went to our room to read and to watch the world championships in track and field in Tokyo. Even Blythe got interested in the men’s marathon. We saw it from the beginning and could see that it would be close with about a half dozen runners together right up until they entered the stadium for the last few hundred meters of the race. It was going to be a sprint promising an exciting finish. Then…the television screen went blank. Ahhh! We did not find out who won until later in the day.

There was a “interdenominational Sunday Service” with Cruise Director Paul. We have attended these in the past but elected to forgo it this time. It is a church service in name only and does not resemble any meaningful kind of worship we are familiar with. It only lasted about twenty minutes, I heard. Instead we listened to Adam’s sermon from last week on SermonAudio.com.

I did not finish my book today because we spent the evening watching the Charlie Kirk memorial.