Sailors of old called sometimes-lengthy (months) periods without any useful wind for their sailing ships, "The Doldrums". It could be maddening: no real "sailoring" chores to do, food supplies waning. For them, not a good time.

For us, we've spent the last week and a half mostly at sea; the water has been like glass most of the time and the wind practically nil -- but we brought our own "wind" (four huge Fiat diesel engines), and glide through those glassine seas seemingly effortlessly.

We're on the longest leg of our journey east -- this segment (you can see the whole trip so far, here, or click on the one below):

Current segment shown in white.

It's about 2,500 miles, and will have us at sea for 5 days straight, eleven days at sea out of the last thirteen.

We hear voices from two of our potential viewing audience:

Jack: "Oh my God what am I going to do. I can't fish. I can't shop at Meijers. I can't do clever things with the tools I can never find. No rods to fix. They won't even let me drive the boat, err, ship. No MSNBC.

Man overboard!"

-------------

George: "Oh my God I can't believe my good fortune. Three dance floors, beautiful women everywhere (and that's just the old broads -- the young ones.... ahhhhh!) I could have danced all night, I could have danced all night, until the day was new.

I musta died and gone t' heaven"

Stress? What Stress?

I (Scott) have to admit that, just a few years ago, this would have filled me with dread in anticipation, and/or driven me insane with boredom. But like so much else of our retirement time, "things" come to fill in the blanks: time passes. All of a sudden your first week of cruise becomes your first month, then the 2nd -- poof! we've got less than a month left.

We've been filling the time in a variety of imaginative ways. We've been helping out in the Internet Centre (as both our parents are of simi liar ages to most of the passengers, we're familiar with the foibles of older folks and computers). Kathy (mostly) developed a "how-to" presentation on using the Internet Centre, and we "co-delivered" it to an appreciative audience. We've gotten a bit of celebrity status which is both heartwarming and occasionally, results in free drinks for us :)

Likewise, we've signed up to do couple of other presentations. We'll be talking about specialized clothing for travel (this is just a 10 minute "pitch"); Kathy's put together (I helped!) a rather substantial "introduction" to photo editing.

Seems a lot of folks take digital photos, but have no idea what to do with them afterward. At least the CDs take up less space than the prints in their original folders in the attic. Don't put CDs in the attic, by the way.

The ship does its part to fill the gap, but I can't say this segment has been the high point for on-board lecturers and entertainers. The ship has an outstanding entertainment cast, but we've seen most of the shows now, some of them twice.

Nothing is so tiring, as the hanging on of uncompleted tasks

We prepared well for this time. Kathy's brought about 50lb (no exaggeration) of books, half of which she's already read. Scott's got 10lb of Atlantic magazines, 90% of which remain unread -- but there is still hope. Kathy's organized something like 7 years of digital photos. Scott's completely re-implemented the Village at Barrett Hill (our condo community in New Hampshire) website. There are 100s of printed recipes Scott'd like to have in his "Mastercook" software. No progress yet on these. Always slide shows to prepare. Internet help sessions. Screwing up his laptop is a perennial favorite of Scott's...

Medical Treat

Aside from the Antarctic lecturers, one of the treats for us on board, has been presentations from Doctors from the Mayo Clinic "Mayo at Sea" program. There have been 4 or 5 speakers since we boarded Feb 1, but the last two have been special. We had the excellent fortune to become acquainted with Dr. Chris and his lovely wife Ann VanDenBerg. They were assigned the cabin next to us, and we noticed a Michigan address on their luggage tags (nosey!).

Midwesterners are the salt of the earth (I know, cuz I married one) so it was almost beyond question that they would be nice. They were; they are. We attended all his lectures, and we've become friends with the two of them and hope to visit them on our westerly "pilgrimage" in June.

The current "Mayo Doc" is Dr. Dennis "Denny" Robertson (and wife Andrea). He's an almost-retired Ophthalmologist ("I work 1 day a week and have a 6 day weekend") for Mayo in Minnesota, Tap Dancer, avid Banjo player and who knows what else! His presentations suggest a real appreciation for art: imagine using the change in artistic style of Paul Gaugin over a 30 year span, to illustrate the effect of aging of the eye!

Back to land, temporarily

We've been shifting timezones (forward) almost every day for the last week or so. This makes for 23 hour days -- annoying. At the moment (April 18th) we're on Central time, and while we'll shift a zone backwards when to go west to the Galapagos Islands, we're nearly on "home" time already. Fortunately they serve breakfast until 10:00am and I am generally able to get Kathy up by 9:30.

Next stop is Arica, Chile -- a new destination for both of us, but based on the guide book, not all that exciting. Maybe we'll have the laundry done -- some of it is getting ripe.