Captain's Corner

We're on the last leg of our Ultimate World Cruise with 3 weeks to go. We're just shy of the artic circle, traveling past Scotland and planning a stop in Iceland tomorrow.

We're at sea today with 9 to 15 foot waves, wind, and light rain - perfect day to attend a presentation onboard in the theater. This morning we attended the Captain's Corner where Captain Stieg, our chief hotel manager Philip and the Chief Engineer provide the passengers with interesting information and also answer questions from the world cruisers.

The Chief Engineer showed a photo of the engine on the ship, the air-conditiioning unit that is designed to produce dry, cold, comfortable air; and the laundry which uses water from the A/C unit. Interestingly it consumes 200L/person/day (compared to NY that uses 800L/person/day.

Philip told us how proud he is of the crew that was hand-picked for this voyage and we couldn't agree more. They were all exceptional at their job. He said his biggest challenge is when we miss a port (typically a tender port due to weather as happened 3 times on this cruise) and in an instant a port day becomes a sea day. We don't notice but behind the scenes a number of things change to accomodate thousands being onboard as opposed to in a port for the day.

Captain Stieg first went to sea at age 16. On September 5th he will celebrate 30 years with RCCL, 27 of those as a Captain of the Vessel. His favorite ship is non other than the Serenade of the Seas. He showed some incredible photos - one being the ship going 17 knots backwards (he joked that Carnival can't do that going forward). Another was of the Northern Lights - especially this one of "The Angel" and his favorite on our voyage "The Icebeg" that we sailed alongside in Antartica.

Some questions of interest from the audience were:

• How close was our ship to the bridge in Denmark - answer only 20 meters (60 feet) but in contrast under the Tampa sky bridge, that the ship will go under after our return to the US, there will be only 6 feet of clearance.

• What happened to the protestors in Amsterdam - they were given an ultimatum to leave by the authorities and when they refused the Port police "lifted" them off the dock.

• Biggest challenge - The Port of Bornhom which is a tight one in Denmark. The captain said the ship had to go from 0 to 10 knots within the length of a ship to make it out of port. (We didn't notice a thing )

• What's with the elevator challenge? Is it rigged so we get exercise to race from the far left when the elevator on the far right appears? Is there a monitor where the controllers are watching from up above and laughing as they watch us scramble to catch the elevator before the doors close before our eyes? Turns out they are actually controlled by a software package.

• How far have we traveled ... As of today, 70,000 nautical miles which is equal to 3 times around the earth at the equator. Wow!