Sept 29—At Sea about 1000 miles from Vancouver

The Maasdam—this is a painting of the ship that hangs in our elevator lobby.

The Maasdam by the numbers:

Length 720'

Beam 101'

Max no. of guests 1258

Draft 24.5 feet

Max speed 21 knots

Once again, the cruise line has overdone itself with things to do on a sea day. And just when Sandra and I wanted to read our books, too. Todays offerings ran from a cha cha dance class to the Captain's welcome toast, and in between there was a fire drill, lectures, and even a bridge class.

The day dawned with some overcast skies and occasional rain--and then a beautiful rainbow!

So a great dawning of another day on the Pacific.

We managed to avoid most of the organized events, except that we did attend the Culinary Arts event (again) this time we saw the chef make Italian dishes in the morning which promoted an Italian restaurant on board

A couple of the appatizers available at the Canaletto, and recreated for us.

Veal meatballs with sage polpettina, and Pappardelle with shrimp, artichokes and lemon-herb sauce.

Late in the morning we went out on the ship's “track”, which is really the Lower Prominade deck, and

did I mention that 4 laps is a mile. All was going very well until all of a sudden there was a fire drill, which closed the deck and ended our walk.

Crew members responding to a simulated emergency

In this case the drill was for the crew, it was good to see they took it seriously, and once completed they had a debriefing on the bridge. Knowing that they are current in their training gives me a good feeling.

The Culinary Arts afternoon event featured recipes from Le Cirque which is a restaurant that's a part of the ship's Pinnacle restaurant. This was a Lobster salad with a brandy cocktail sauce and potato confit, followed by a crème brulee. Frankly we occasionally make a crème brulee, and using the packaged mix saves about 4 hours of prep—just sayin'

Sandra and I spent the afternoon at the pool. I discovered the pool was cold (by my standards) but the hot tub was just right. Turns out that everyone in the hot tub was pretty interesting and a long conversation on the Canadian Health Plan was the topic. I actually learned quite a bit about the scheme, as they call it.

Dinner in the Dining room tonight and with some nice folks, Ma-ann and John. He from London she from the Philipeans, but their home is in northern California. They are on their way to a rental in Sydney and will be there for the next 6 months, and then in April will return home. Ma-ann says she likes to go to south east Asia during their Australian cycle, John goes back to England for a few weeks—she doesn't like England...”they're too stiff”, she says. She served 4 years in the US Navy as a Navy nurse, and then went on to be a nurse in private practice. John was a corporate jet pilot. A nice couple.

After dinner we went to the Showroom for a presentation called “Atlantic Crossing”, done by the Maasdam singers and dancers who sang about every song that came out of England from the Beatles and Stones to Elton John and Boy George. And maybe 25 others... the background band was the HAL Cats (HAL=Holland America Line) which is the resident rock and roll band, all in all a very nice presentation.